# afb control



## joelz (Dec 16, 2001)

agian clayton, the reason afb is becoming more and more prevalent in the us is exactly your style of beekeeping, beekeepers ar not sterilize their infected equipment, and burning infected comb, they are trying to cover it up with medication, if every beekeeper would at the first sign of afb quarentine that hive on new foundation, burn or nuc the old frames and comb and sterilze the hives, afb would be drastically reduced. im suprised, you dont recommend this as you seem to want bees to naturally take care of this highly contagious disease. one last thing i appriciate your concern of my opinions i assume that is why you have made it impossible for me to reply with the right information to learning beekeepers


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## Clayton (Dec 8, 2000)

Read my post of the same name.

Clay


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## Clayton (Dec 8, 2000)

one last thing i appriciate your concern of my opinions i assume that is why you have made it impossible for me to reply with the right information to learning 

reply:

You are mistaken. I have not edited or deleted any of your posts.

Clay


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## Robert Brenchley (Apr 23, 2000)

Hi All.

There are three, possibly four, approaches to AFB open to us.

1)Burn. This is the only legal remedy in the UK at present. It's effective, but it's also drastic. We get scattered small outbreaks of AFB here, but it's under control. I don't know why it should have become endemic in the States; what went wrong? Was it the bees or the beekeepers? 

2) Treat with TM. As has correctly been said, it's a prophylactic. It kills the active disease, but not the spores, which remain to contaminate comb. The other problem, of course, is resistant AFB, which was inevitable sooner or later. On top of that, you don't know what you're doing to friendly bacteria. All I can say is, I'm glad we haven't gone down that route over here. It has been used with mild outbreaks of EFB, but the disease tends to recur. The rule with foulbrood here is that you call in the bee inspector, who treats the disease. I bet there are people out their doing their own thing, but I wonder how many are missing the disease?

3) Shake down. This sounds like a good solution in mild vases, at least on the face of it. Unfortunately it's illegal here, so nobody locally has any experience of it. A combination of shakedoewns followed by treatment is currently being used for mild cases of EFB, apparently with success.

4) The hygeinic route. I believe someone in the UK had bees that would tear down infected comb, and clean the disease out of the hive. Unfortunately the work was discontinued when the law on burning came in, and I've no idea whether this is a practical solution. All I can say is, I wish we had more latitude under the law. I'd far rather lose a colony than use TM though, that's a nice simple cheap altenative in the short term, but what does it do in the long?

Regards,

Robert Brenchley

[email protected]


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## Clayton (Dec 8, 2000)

Hi,

In the Dec 2001 American Bee Journal, Steve Taber in his 
article "Inspectors, AFB, Burn, But Why?" talked about this solution. 
As he points out, many times a queen may be partially resistant to 
AFB and by destroying the bees, we may actually be selecting away 
from resistant genes. Taber asks in the article: "What I don't 
understand is why beekeepers are so reluctant to work their bees 
toward resistance to AFB disease?" The shaking method for treatment 
of AFB has been around for some time. At the Vancouver Apimondia `99, 
Danish researcher Camilla Juul Brodsgarrd gave her presentation of 
this very method and showed that shaking is a viable control method. (Taken from biobee)

I would also place infected comb culling under this. Total destruction of colonies is an old technique and is not neccessary. By doing this one is destroying any resistant stock that may develope.

Now lets open up Dadants, Hive and The Honey bee (newest edition). And see how to biologically handle AFB combs to process the wax:

Pg.689

5. Slumgum from efficient wax extraction devices(devices using hotwater, steam and pressure) "WILL" DESTROY american foulbrood spores; however, slumgum from solar wax melters may still contain viable spores (they don't work, clay). Though it is not attractive to bees, slumgum from solar melters SHOULD be destroyed.

So for those of you interested in controling brood diseases biologically read the post AFB control (not afb control). Which is a post from Dee Lusby which I copyed here so I didn't have to rewrite the whole process. 

Clay


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