That is a good point. I didn't think to mention that it is important to check state regulations, even though I've read it a thousand times. Thanks for bringing it up! I'm glad you like the channel...and I hope I never see AFB in my hives ever again, either! So far, the colony looks fantastic, so good in fact I might make a follow up video to show my subscribers how a hive can really recover using this method (if it's allowed of course). I've never had the occasion to try it because this is my first hive with AFB although I've seen it in other BK'ers hives.

Honey Bee Honey In a perfect world it could be eradicated completely, but as you've clearly pointed out, it lies dormant much like the common cold ready to rise when resistance is low. We are shoulder to shoulder trying to improve the honey bee survival rate.

i also liked the presentation. I want to comment on the practice of shaking the bees onto new equipment. Over the past 20 years I've done about 15 shakedowns with 100% success. I don't use antibiotics. I've read studies that suggest the failure rate for the procedure is about 5%. Hard to understand why it isn't encouraged more.

Hi Stephen: This is way overdue, but I just saw your post, sorry. I have only had the one case of AFB and the result was fantastic I have to say. None of my other colonies contracted the disease and the bees did great. I think that older beekeepers that were bombarded with how bad this disease was and the importance of destroying it, preventing it, etc. in turn preached the same thing. We weren't here when AFB really destroyed colonies around the world at a time when they really had no idea what to do. So, I think that fear drives people to do drastic things, this being one of them. Better to be safe than sorry. Fortunately, people like you and I, Ross Conrad have been more curious than fearful and found that this is a great solution! Thanks for commenting.

Our state inspector is a great guy but he really doesn't want to inspect a real apiary. He pokes around in the hives of bee havers unannounced and leaves little notes on hives saying he's been there. Suppose you're rearing queens. Is it permissible to let a state guy look? While at it he may as well tear apart your incubator just to be safe. He should look thru all the cell builders and mating nucs. Who cares if he's in a big hurry and kills half your bugs?

Thank you very much!

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. Hope your hives are doing well!

Thank You very much!

Any kind of farming dude

Thank you very much for taking the time to write back. Feedback really helps!

Thanks for taking the time to comment!

Thanks very much Mike, I appreciate it. Later in the year I should be able to get back on track and make more videos!

Thanks for saying so!

Thanks. I've been very busy lately, but I'm getting ramped up to continue with this series and have a few other ideas in mind!

Thanks!

Otherwise healthy people have died of bacterial infections long before the discovery of antibiotics, significantly less after.

Thanks for taking the time to say so!

Thanks for taking the time to say so, I appreciate it and I'm glad you like it.

It did for many years, that is true, and when I started keeping bees that was my practice. However, AFB has become somewhat immune to Terramycin in those years because of prophylactic treatment, i.e. treating bees for prevention. It is no longer recommended as a prophylactic treatment, only when there are signs of the disease, AFB or EFB. The same thing is happening in humans. Because so many people are given antibiotics when they don't need them, for instance virus infections such as Influenza or Coronavirus, some bacteria have become resistant to anti-biotics. Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is a good example.

Thanks a lot!

I don't do this commercially, but have about 23 years experience with beekeeping. For a large part of that time I was involved with other beekeepers and helped run about 110 hives or so, 63 of which were my own. I can't get enough Honey Bee literature and because of that, I consider myself a life-time learner in the arena, so I just try to learn as much as possible. I have a lot of experience to draw from as well, so the experience plus the literature makes for a more complete understanding...at least in my opinion. Thanks for asking!

They have. AFB was THE disease that led to the employment of bee inspectors, but in the last couple of decades most states have gotten away from any type of formal inspection, not all of them, but most of them. Currently, there is nothing done for feral hives with AFB. However, diligence with beekeepers is where the rubber hits the road. If all managed colonies are inspected and treated (one way or another) it definitely strengthens feral colonies as well.

Africanized bees are here but so far they are sticking to the south...Texas, Arizona, Louisiana, Southern California, New Mexico and I've heard a report or two in Colorado and Utah. However, they first made North America in 1985 and since then beekeepers have been able to corral the gene pool. Anymore, there isn't really a true pure bred Africanized honey bee in the U.S. There are traces in a lot of the gene pool however, because some popular queen breeders in Texas (and probably other southern states) sold queens that had AHB genes (years ago), thus spreading them across the U.S. When a hive becomes overly aggressive without cause (e.g. stress, loss of queen, starvation) the queen is usually replaced with a European queen, so the spread has significantly slowed. Hope that helps!

I know this is a few weeks late, but there has been some interesting research at Arizona State University with Africanized bees. Both for hygienic behavior (which seems to be natural to them) and tameness. I went there, and there are some hives you can open up without a suit that are 100% descended from vicious hives.

Mustrum Ridcully Sounds similar to the Russian Domesticated Red Fox experiment. Where foxes where breed into dogs. Both are proof Darwinism / evolution is occurring.

No species turns into another species..adaptations occur within a species never in history has one species adapted into another..fact.

It's not all that bad, so long as you do a good job actually beekeeping. Most of that information is coming from "hands-off" beekeepers. Don't become one of those! Some of that is false as well. Going into the brood chamber too much will not cause the hive to abscond, nor will temperature (bees regulate their own temperature). You just have to make sure they have a source of water!

So "hands-off" guys basically shell out a few hundred dollars for all the equipment and bees then set it all up and go "whatever happens happens"? i see what you mean why would anyone invest so much time, money, and effort then do nothing to ensure good results. seems like a lot of bee keeping is elbow grease to. are they just lazy? And thank you so much for clearing that up. i was completely convinced beekeeping was an expensive shot in the dark with little chance of things going your way. Also one more question will the bees leave the hive if there inst enough flowering plants in the area? i live in the middle of the woods with a decent amount of cow pasture about two miles down the road. some clover grows there but mostly gets trampled and eaten by the cattle. we have some flowering trees but they only bloom once in the spring. i know they make those pollen bricks you put in the hive but if i am going to have to keep buying that then it may not be worth it at all to keep bees for me. ive been trying to do my research before i go asking real bee keepers like you questions so i dont go in knowing absolutely nothing but its just raising more questions. sorry and thanks for taking the time to help me out.

Once a hive is established, they will not leave...they will swarm when they are strong, but leaving a hive completely is pretty unprecedented. Hives will abscond, i.e. leave the entire hive, if there is disease or parasites at uncontrollable levels. But, bees can travel up to 12 miles, radius, to obtain food. I can't imagine a place in the middle of the woods that couldn't support a hive. You'd be amazed at how many very small plants actually bloom in the woods that support honey bees and native bees. That being said, the first year you will have to invest in some sugar syrup and watch the front of the hive to see how much pollen is coming in. When you get closer to the spring, keep in touch and I'll try to help you get a feel for what to look for!

That is such a relief to hear. i really appreciate the help.

Zaku186

+Ryan Morehead Honestly, I don't know for sure. I don't know what temperature floor will kill the spores, but here is what I do know; beeswax melts at 140 degrees F, which I am almost certain will not kill the spores. The flash point (the point where it will flash but not burn is around 204 degrees F and the fire point, which is where it will burn continuously is around 400 degrees F. It isn't safe to go beyond 204 and my best guess to kill bacterial spores is over 240. Personally, I wouldn't take the chance.

This would be something worth some scientific study- perhaps melt temp plus some other factor would stop the cycle.

You could try it and then send it to a lab where they can test for AFB spores. I have no idea what it would cost but I doubt it would be too expensive, or if you're handy with a microscope you can identify the spores in an infected hive, melt down the wax and then check for the spores again.

Also try Cinnamon Bark Essential Oil, it's said that this essential oil *has* been tested against bacteria, virus' and fungus. So... *Maybe* it might kill off this horrendous bee killer, if either of you are willing to try out the testing. I don't own hives yet, but I do know a good bit about EO's. 😊

+Sansa Stark I know oils work but don t want to mix with wax

Use queens of resistant, hygienic stock. Rotate combs on a regular basis, and inspect regularly. If a hive all of a sudden decreases in activity, make sure to do a thorough inspection.

Hi John. The honey stores in their honey stomachs when you shake them do indeed contain AFB spores. However, the first thing they do after shaking is to make comb with that honey. Before they can do anything they need comb and it is most likely that in building the comb any AFB spores they may carry are entombed in that comb. When the honey is used to feed the workers, they are too old to be infected by the spores and so are taken out of the hive when the bees defecate outside the hive. I didn't notice any, none what so ever, signs of AFB after the first couple of frames were pulled and then the queen started laying eggs. At this time the hive had honey syrup on and was using that to create the royal jelly diet for the young brood. The bees had to collect all new pollen also, so it is a very miniscule portion of AFB spores that are brought back in and even then, many of them are removed by the midgut of the adult honey bees. If, however, you did as you suggested, the bees would start building comb and bringing in nectar and pollen. However only small amounts of pollen would make it through the queen excluder. After a couple days, cut out all of the comb and give them the foundation frames and syrup. This would definitely yield better results as far as decreased amounts of AFB spores being kept in the hive. My questions is whether or not they need it? I don't think so. HIve #4 has done fantastic since then, although their queen died in the winter of 2018 and they eventually dwindled to the point where they froze. No disease was found in the hive and I have started a new split in their hive, which is doing fantastic!

Drones develop from egg to larva for 24 days, which is three days longer than the workers at 21 days. Drone cells are also larger than worker cells as are the drones themselves. This means that the mites have an extra three days to develop and more mites can live off of the same drone, which basically means that the varroa laying the eggs can lay them more efficiently. So, checking drone pupae (when they are still white) is an easy way to see if you have a mite problem. It can't tell you how bad the problem is except as an estimate, but if you start to see many varroa on drone pupae, definitely use a sticky board or some other method to find out how bad the infestation is and decide if you need to treat!

I hadn't heard of it. I'll have to look it up!

It is impossible to completely remove the AFB spores whether you shake them in front or not. That being said, you have a good suggestion. This hive, which I did a follow up video on, went on to never show signs of foulbrood again and produced a lot of honey the next year.

No, my degrees are in business and disaster preparedness. Just a life long study of honeybees!

Just bees, so far as we know. Not harmful to humans at all, or dogs, cats, pigs or horses. Other insects might be infected, but I have never heard if that is known.

Mrow

My normal relative humidity is 17% and we get to over 100 fairly consistently in the summer, sometimes 90 in January. Damp anything isn't a problem in the high desert. Maybe you should expand on what your saying? If you see rising damp...maybe you should define that and then show me where you see it, otherwise it just seems like you're making a blanket statement with no details, because you have none. This is a very different environment from England and no one should ever judge conditions made a half a world away from them because they are all very different. Also, AFB doesn't necessarily require a damp environment...it is usually caused by conditions that they bees have to keep their hive in for themselves...which is why AFB thrives in a honey bee hive in the first place...all over the world.

On a morning the air is warming the floor is cold this lets a natural process begin that fungi use to grow. We call it Dew also bugs can crawl straight into your hive I just say copy nature the bees normally hang from a tree limb OK :) Mike

Okay, lets make sure we are talking about the same thing. A floor is a man made bottom, and the ground is the earth here in the US. My hives aren't on the ground they are lifted up four inches from the ground, with the exception of four hives in my backyard that are sitting on concrete pavers 1.5 inches thick. Then there is either a bottom board sitting on the paver or a hive stand that lifts it up even higher. Dew is caused by the difference in temperature between the air and the earth. This difference in temperature causes moisture to condense on the ground, which is what we call dew. In my environment, dew may last an hour before the sun warms it up and it dries out. As for the bees, honey bees do not normally hang from a limb on a tree. Rather they inhabit a tree trunk that is either a hole from another animal that has died, or more often dry rot in the trunk. There have been cases where honey bees hang from branches but this was causes by a swarm (swarms do hang from branches until they find an appropriate covered, easily guarded space) that could not find an appropriate nest. Bees also use propolis as an anti-fungal agent to keep any fungus from growing. Despite this, chalkbrood and stonebrood are two fungal invasions into a honeybee hive which are definitely caused by moisture in the hive creating conditions for fungal growth. However, this is caused be relative humidity, moisture produced by honey bee respiration and heat production within the hive and inadequate ventilation of a hive (which is why it is very common to see chalkbrood mummies outside feral hives). In my environment chalkbrood is only seen in the spring when relative humidity is at its peak and only in hives that are furnished with old equipment and have little ventilation...a project I have been working on for a number of years. As to bugs crawling straight into the hive...well, if you keep strong hives, they bees guard the entrance and bugs just can't crawl into the hive without a fight. My environment is too dry and the soil too sandy for Small Hive Beetle to live. So, the only bugs I ever see in my hives (aside from Varroa) are ants...period. However, you alluded to seeing something in my hives when you said "as your hives show". What are you claiming?

Wow there cowboy lol your in a hurry to say a lot. Bee's have their hives on cave roofs and trees for good reason that's all chill your beans mate :)

This is a learning forum, so if you have something constructive to say then say it. It is with that spirit that I gave a thorough answer to your comment...that's all. If I don't quite know what you're getting at then new beekeepers won't either.

V

Iodine will not kill the spore, which is a dormant form of some bacteria. It can lie dormant for over 100 years. When conditions are right, the spore opens up and the bacteria becomes active, known as the vegetative state. However, it is possible to scorch the inside of all of the hive bodies with a torch in order to keep the hive equipment but this method requires that the entire inside of the hive bodies are scorched down to causing some 'alligatoring' of the wood. I have plenty and want to maintain clean and good looking hives. Also, in my professional career I am aware that scorched wood continues to give off poisonous vapors...probably not good for the bees, though potentially not a problem because of their short life span. I'd rather take the more conservative route.

Hi Cory, it was only one hive and yes, I saved the entire hive. It is covered in the video and they are still doing well today.

No essential oils have had any success in killing the spore state of AFB, that I am aware of.

Sorry about that.

Exactly how I felt! If you're interested I have a video I uploaded but is awaiting copyright that is an update on this hive! Just keep looking for it, should be a day or two...or three!

If you had actually watched the video you would have seen that I didn't "burn the poor things (bees, i.e.). In fact, today they are a healthy, strong hive. I burned the equipment. Brood in the frames were already dead because of AFB. Also...honey bees fly, so quarantining them is a misnomer. As they begin to dwindle in late stages of AFB, other hives find the dying hive and loot the honey. This transmits the bacteria to the looting hives, exponentially spreading the disease to other hives. You should consider the long term effects of any decision you make regarding bee disease (or human disease), rather than the short term non-solutions that only endanger more lives. Honey Bees already do this...when they feel sick or know they are dying they leave the hive so as to prevent any other bees in their hive from catching the disease. Also, you should actually watch the video, then you'll see what actually happened and that there is a better solution than the one you proposed, which only leads to other hives, feral and commercial that have to deal with AFB because you didn't exercise your due diligence. Also, in some states burning hives (bees and equipment) is the only acceptable action to take, though thankfully not in my state of Colorado.

How do you quarantine a bee colony? They have to fly around to get food and water.

Quarantining a colony just involves moving it to an area six miles or so from any other hives. The problem is not so much foragers flying around and spreading disease (though this can happen, especially if you have a communal feeder), it is that diseased hives eventually become weak, which other hives then rob from. It is when robbers come into an infected hive to rob that disease is spread! If you move the hive to an area where there are no other colonies, theoretically they won't get robbed out. With AFB, quarantining is a viable option if you plan on taking care of the problem right away. If, however, you plan on letting them live and nature take it's course...you will find that no hives can actually be quarantined! There are feral colonies, or unknown backyard beekeeper hives around that WILL find that hive. The disease will then spread to those colonies that are within striking distance of other hives...so on and so forth. This is why burning a hive infected with AFB has been the standard approach for a couple hundred (or more) years. In extreme cases, any hives in the same apiary with any hive infected were burned, healthy and diseased hives alike. Anyway, I hope that answers your question!

The spores last 100 years they need to be destroyed and replaced.

Not sure if you're responding to me or tosgem? In any case, I agree with you...that's why I burned the equipment.