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Iowa Honey Producers Association |
The Buzz Newsletter January 2006 |
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(continued from page 8) When I found the Queen I placed her on the frame of drawn comb in the clean hive body and closed the hive up so she wouldn’t fly away. I then finished shaking the bees off the combs and allowed them to crawl into the clean hive. This gave them a sense of swarming and with the new foundation and plenty of fructose they started to draw foundation. I then took these two hive bodies home and cleaned them up the same way I had done the first hive body. The next day I took these two hive bodies with new foundation and a division board feeder in them out to the bee yard and remove the last two disease hive bodies in that yard. I then cleaned up those frames and hive bodies. I came upon a dilemma when I found some of the infected frames were solid plastic made by Pierco. I called Pierco to ask how to clean and sterilize the solid plastic frames that were contaminated with American Foulbrood Disease. The person I talked to at Pierco couldn’t give me a proven method of disinfectant of the solid Pierco frames. He did say he had heard of some beekeepers taking the frames to a car wash and using high pressure soapy water to clean the frames and he also said he had heard of some beekeepers dipping the frames in a bleach water after high pressure water cleaning. I wasn’t satisfied with his answers, so I called Jerry Hayes in Florida and asked him how to clean the solid plastic frames like Pierco and the solid sheets of Plastic Foundation. Mr. Hayes told me to simply take the frames to a car wash and using high pressure wash them thoroughly removing the entire casing left from the rearing of brood. I did not need to dip them in a bleach solution or do anything else to disinfect the frames. Knowing this saved me from having to replace some expensive plastic frames.
At this time I was contacted by Becky Ohrtman, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship; regarding an anonymous report that I had American Foulbrood in an observation hive at the fair. I reported that I had AFB and yes, I was working on cleaning up the disease. I agreed that the best thing to do was to have an inspector come and check my bees. On Aug. 29th, Bill Eickholt; state apiary inspector, inspected 13 of my 15 colonies of bees. We found one hive in my yard at Earlham with American Foulbrood. I had not checked that yard since early June when I put on supers. Bill Eickholt told me that according to the Iowa Code, I had 10 days to clean up the disease. I did the same thing to that yard that I had done to the others by replacing the hive body with new foundation and feeding the bee’s fructose. On Sept. 13th Bill Eickholt and Becky Ohrtman, made a re-inspection of the hives and found them to be clean of American Foulbrood. I have included a picture of Bill doing his first inspection of my bees (Photo 5) and a couple of pictures of an excellent frame of brood and bees. (Photo 4) Note the queen in the center of the picture (Photo 3). She is a nice size and nice golden colored Italian Queen.
This doesn’t mean that my work is done. I will have to monitor these hives very closely this spring to make sure that the bees haven’t stored honey for food with foulbrood spores in it and feed it to the young bees and create another out break of American Foulbrood. I haven’t fed any antibiotics such as terramycin or trylosin. I feel that by sterilizing the frames and inside of the hive bodies and bottom boards and shaking the bees onto new foundation no disease will be transmitted to the new combs by the bees. This was the most severe outbreak of American Foulbrood that I have had in the thirty-five years of keeping bees and I hope it is the last. It just goes to show that if it is near your bees they will find it and it can get ahead of you in a short time. The important thing is to take the proper steps to clean up the equipment and irradiate the disease. Sincerely, Gordon Powell
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