Treating nosema with garlic !?

[pbh4]

An experienced beekeeper was testing his bees for nosema and kindly took me along on Friday to show me how to do it. He has been trialling a nosema treatment based on garlic that he got from some Czech friends of his. It seemed to work. All of the treated hives tested negative. The highly infested images I just posted in the microscopy section came from one of the colonies before testing (They have been in his freezer for a year). We could not find a single spore after treatment.

Has anyone heard of using garlic for nosema?

(If done at the wrong time of year it could make for interesting honey. Possibly more tasty than thymol honey?)

Paul

 

[Queens59]

Buckfast Abbey Apiary use garlic in their feed against Nosema and Varroa - not a strong mix but I can't remember the proportion...

 

[Finman]

.
As far as I know, garlic does not have antibacteria features.

Waste of time.

 

[Norton]

Tests were done at the Aristotelis university in Greece and it was found not be effective against Nosema.

 

[Skyhook]

.
As far as I know, garlic does not have antibacteria features.

Waste of time.

Quite a lot of reports suggesting that it does, such as here , but whether the benefits are great enough and the side effects (eg taint) small enough to make allicin an improvement on thymol, is another matter. It seems from previous contenders that a lotof essential oils have similar properties, but as thymol is well understood, and cheaply and widely available, it seems to me that a certain level of efficacy is required to make it worthwhile substituting.

.

 

[Luminos]

May not be effective against Nosema, but will definitely keep vampires away from your hives

 

[Brosville]

Garlic is highly effective for many uses, has anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal properties, and may well work against Nosema.
If it had been "discovered" by a pharmaceutical company, and they could get a patent on it there'd be claims of a "wonderdrug" - as there is no money to be made.........
There is a product called "Nopex" available, which contains allicin (one of garlic's main constituents) sold for poultry use - we've used it on our chooks, and "it does what it says on the tin" - http://www.mantel-farm.co.uk/7.html

 

[Hivemaker.]

Some peer reviewed research papers, with regards to feeding bees with garlic as a nosema treatment would be useful.

 

[mbc]

Some peer reviewed research papers, with regards to feeding bees with garlic as a nosema treatment would be useful.

Ach, you ask too much, we dont seem to do references here.
Everyone knows raw garlic makes you dump your worms, so QED, it must work against nosema, CCD and chickens too, (and possibly HIV if administered with prayer).

 

[Brosville]

Strangely enough, as I alluded earlier, there's no money to be made from a natural remedy, hence there isn't the great drive to research it. As Skyhook's earlier link shows (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594976 there is some research that already proves it's efficacy, so it is entirely reasonable suppose that it may be an excellent avenue worthy of further exploration for treatment of bees wherever it's properties are indicated.
It's "only anecdotal", but have in my experience found garlic invaluable on the farm and in the home - apart from the pong I've never come across any "contra-indications", and have found it remarkably effective in all sorts of things from mites to infections...

 

[Hivemaker.]

Strangely enough, as I alluded earlier, there's no money to be made from a natural remedy, hence there isn't the great drive to research it.

Same would apply to EO's,but they still do the research.

 

[For want of a better word]

Mandrake root also has magical properties,,,,,,.....

But along with "make you better powders" and happily ever after" drops I have never seen it on the shelves of Holland & Barret!

 

[Brosville]

Should we not then call for some research to be done? (or perhaps some bright spark do their own?) -
I really am somewhat amazed that some people can only accept the efficacy of a product if it's branded by "Big Pharma" - need I point out that aspirin was discovered in willow bark, yew trees yield an anti-cancer drug (etc etc), and have noticed such things as garlic perles, green-lipped mussel extract, fish and plant oils, and (shock horror) propolis are available in every health food shop?...... and many hospitals now use honey as a treatment for hard to heal wounds.........

 

[mbc]

Should we not then call for some research to be done? (or perhaps some bright spark do their own?) -

But do you know a reputable source of mandrake root ?

 

[Blodwen Price]

But do you know a reputable source of mandrake root ?

I think mandrake plants would be good starting point, but I can't comment upon their reputation, good or otherwise

 

[Brosville]

It is said "know your enemy" -
Mandrake is a herb that exists (in both European and US forms), and has been widely used in folk medicine for hundreds of years, both as a purgative and in poultices, and was used by the ancient Greeks as an anaesthetic - it is undoubtedly a powerful plant, and probably owing to the root's resemblance to the body, much folklore grew up around it. Should it's properties be further investigated? - most certainly!

 

[Storm™]

Mandrake Root.

I'm growing some at the moment. But - it is never to be toyed with. It is packed full of hullucanagenic chemicals that would literally drive you to peel your own face. It is widely available on the net but what you will probably be buying is dried shredded turnip. There are or rather were two major suppliers if the whole root and both tried to send some but the customs paperwork thwarted them. So I got seeds. But it is extremely dangerous.

In folklaw it was the all powerful thing to have. When it grew it, as already stated, it resembled a human form. It was male if it had genetalia and female if it had female parts. A female one did and does command much more money. To pull one from the ground would cause it to scream so it would kill a man. In order to harvest it a dog or horse was tied to it and called. Thereby killing the dog but not the farmer.

There is a lot written about it both medicinally and in folklaw. But I would never ever introduce it into the food chain in any dose. Besides when talking of cost and saying garlic would possibly be too expensive mandrake root whole is astronomical. Its grown in the swamps of America easily and in some parts of Europe. It likes a sandy well drained moist soil. So getting the ballance right is hard though it can be found wild here but rarely. Or so i have heard. But seriously please don't put this nor a distillate anywhere near your hives. But that's just my tuppence.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Back to garlic.....
When I was working a lady brought in a cat with an ugly bleeding oral tumour and I recommended euthanasia. She asked if I minded if she try garlic first for a week. A week later the lesion was significantly reduced. Biopsy revealed a squamous cell carcinoma so in my mind that reinforced my initial feelings on the outcome. The owner was adding raw grated garlic to the food (I guess she was lucky the cat accepted it). I kept an eye on things and that cat lived another three years albeit with a tumour that never quite disappeared.

My mother had a series of TIAs 20 years ago leading to a diagnosis of complete bilateral carotid blockage. Her consultant was reluctant to give any prognosis but cheerfully told me that she had a similar lady who survived three years.
Several tons of garlic later my mother is still with us.
Perhaps there's something there?

 

[Storm™]

Garlic is well known to clean blood vessels of plaque in humans. However wouldn't recommend it for cats and certainly not dogs. Onions or derivatives are poisonous to dogs not sure about cats but I suppose in this case it worked or was a lucky co incidence.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I did quite a bit of research into it at the time.
Garlic is OK for dogs and cats and there are tablets formulated for both species.
Denes, for example, make them.