# EFB options



## Beebeard

I do a bunch of cutouts and I bring them to my home yard to monitor for a while before bringing them to my main out yard, just Incase anything unpleasant shows up. Good thing I do that, I’ve got one that is now showing classic EFB. Does not look like AFB. I did this cutout in March and they built back up ok, now filling 2 mediums nicely.
I know others have dealt with this, my first thought is get some terra pro. How do I find a vet for that elusive VFD? If I can get it cleaned up, I’ve got some fresh queens coming ready soon to requeen.
its just in the one hive, I have a second hive back there that’s inside a log. That one came home from the tree company about a month ago, and I don’t know it’s health since it’s inside a log. I was planning on doing a cutout on that one this weekend, and actually found my problem while getting things ready for that job.


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## Fivej

Try this for locating a vet: https://www.hbvc.org/


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## crofter

If it is only in one colony, my once bit twice shy advice would be to destroy the frames and scorch the boxes. Some people have been lucky in cleaning it up with Oxy Tet but it apparently often comes back. Though treated the bacteria can remain dormant in comb for close to two years. I wish I had been more aggressive or had diagnosed earlier!


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## enjambres

Very smart move to keep those bees separate during a quarantine period. 

(And if you've got a quarantine yard, treat it like one, too: separate gloves & tools, etc.)

Having dealt with documented EFB in my own yard, I would act aggressively: I would do a double shook swarm, on to different equipment, followed by treatment. I would shook-swarm the bees first into old (but presumed uninvolved) boxes, or even ones just cobbed together for the event. Then a three days later shook-swarm them, again, into a new set of permanent, equipment.

I would also treat the suspect hive and every hive in the same yard.

I would destroy the equipment I discovered the EFB in, as well as the first set of boxes in the shook swarm series. Just take the modest economic hit of losing one round of good equipment and the interim equipment for the first shook swarm (which could a cardboard nuc box) over getting multiple sets of permanent equipment contaminated. I have a lot of stuff in storage - at least a hundred boxes, thousands of frames, etc., dozens of bases, tops, etc., which is contaminated. I don't know when/if I'll be ready to risk using it again. 

But I wouldn't do any of this without getting a positive result on one of the field test kits on the suspect hive. Because other things look like EFB.

Good luck - I don't mean that sarcastically, at all. I really do hope it goes well for you. EFB is addressed far too casually, IMO. It's presence in a yard can become a chronic problem that takes a few years to work its way out, even with treatment. I am hoping that this, my third season since it was found here, will finally be the conclusive turning point. But my foraging weather is poor this year, so I may have a re-occurence.

EFB sucks!

Nancy


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## squarepeg

crofter said:


> Though treated the bacteria can remain dormant in comb for close to two years.


Do you have a reference for this frank?


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## squarepeg

enjambres said:


> EFB sucks!


understatement of the year nancy.

i am scrambling at this time dealing with an outbreak. 8 multi-year colonies surviving off treatments have been euthanized. 3 others have been moved to a quarantine yard. 

i'm not sure where it came from, but discovered there are now at least 3 'new' beekeepers within flying distance of my yards with bees imported from out of the area, at least 2 of which have yet to get a colony through a winter. haven't made contact with the third one yet.

quadruple dang. will update my thread when the dust settles, if it even does.


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## crofter

squarepeg said:


> Do you have a reference for this frank?


I wish I had collected all my links. This one in second paragraph is the closest I found in a quick search re: survival time on comb. https://articles.extension.org/page...a-bacterial-disease-affecting-honey-bee-brood

Quite commonly references were to 7 months survival in honey and 18 months in "beebread". Recent studies show quite a few different sub types with wide variations in virulence confuses peoples reported experience with _mellissococcus plutonius_

I believe both Flowerplanter and Enjambres have quite a collection of material and links on EFB


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## squarepeg

crofter said:


> I wish I had collected all my links. This one in second paragraph is the closest I found in a quick search re: survival time on comb. https://articles.extension.org/page...a-bacterial-disease-affecting-honey-bee-brood
> 
> Quite commonly references were to 7 months survival in honey and 18 months in "beebread". Recent studies show quite a few different sub types with wide variations in virulence confuses peoples reported experience with _mellissococcus plutonius_
> 
> I believe both Flowerplanter and Enjambres have quite a collection of material and links on EFB


many thanks frank. good idea about saving the links. i've got 20+ hours pouring through what literature the searches bring up. there has been mention of the bacteria persisting in equipment but not on how long.

perhaps this thread could serve as an archive for links if those who have are willing to post them here.

currently trying to find an irradiation facility closer than pennsylvania if one exists.


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## crofter

squarepeg said:


> understatement of the year nancy.
> 
> i am scrambling at this time dealing with an outbreak. 8 multi-year colonies surviving off treatments have been euthanized. 3 others have been moved to a quarantine yard.
> 
> i'm not sure where it came from, but discovered there are now at least 3 'new' beekeepers within flying distance of my yards with bees imported from out of the area, at least 2 of which have yet to get a colony through a winter. haven't made contact with the third one yet.
> 
> quadruple dang. will update my thread when the dust settles, if it even does.


Oh how familiar this is.

I have looked at options of trying to clean up and sanitize frames but that appears far more work than building new. Every bit of ones activity has apparent chances of putting more infected material into the surroundings. If the source of origin of the disease is not known, you may be only shoveling smoke! The uncertainty is the most discouraging part of the whole experience.


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## squarepeg

crofter said:


> The uncertainty is the most discouraging part of the whole experience.


indeed.

i'll own up to my part in this as far as the indiscriminate moving around of equipment, stores, and bees goes. i have always done a whole lot of that without consequence up until now.

that, and the fact that i have all of my hives sitting closely and next to each other in nice neat rows, all facing the same direction and looking exactly the same.

my losses were clumped in groups of 2 and 3 adjacent hives, indicating to me that drift was a big factor. 

i believe i am seeing the results of one of the more contagious and virulent strains of EFB. i wish i could get the strain typed here like they do in the u.k.


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## lharder

There was an interesting video from the National Honey Show. At one time England euthanized colonies and had low rates of efb. Once again getting rid of susceptible genetics. Once they started treating and salvaging, rates went up. Also there are different types. Are all bees equally resistant to all types? I suspect not. Message, stop moving bees around between regions.


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## squarepeg

could this be the video you are referring to lharder?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U&feature=youtu.be

(highly recommended viewing to anyone wanting to get up to speed on efb, and my starting point for further inquiry into some of the ground covered in the video)

it turns out there are 35 different 'sequence types' of efb. the various types are differentiated from each other using a molecular genetic technique referred to as 'mlst', which stands for 'multi-locus sequence typing'.

it appears that efb typing is being used to determine the course of action for remediation. choices include shook swarm, oxytetracylcline, or destruction (burning) depending on the efb type.

preventative measures such as arranging apiaries to minimize drift and avoiding the mixing and matching of equipment/resources are also discussed.


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## enjambres

Common-place beekeeping techniques of moving frames to equalize hives, making up splits and nucs from mixed hive sources, adding a frames of brood when coping with LW, or a queenless hive, not keeping all equipment segregated to a single colony's hive stack, and bringing in new colonies such as cut-outs and swarms are all way EFB spreads. And none of those are indicators of piss-poor beekeeping or even unskilled beekeeping.

I am no longer keeping a full set of separate tools for each colony (since I've had no confirmed indication of EFB for a year.) But I have painted each hive a different color and I have a full set of equipment for each colony and now NEVER move any frames or boxes between hives. (That's how I inadvertently spread in the first year - equalizing brood and stores frames between hives in very early spring, before any problem was evident.)

And I keep pollen patty on the hives until well into early summer (past fruit blossom and dandelion.)

@Squarepeg, do you have lab confirmation, either from Beltsville or the field test kits? Are you having any success (or do you even want to considering your TF goals) locating a source of Oxytet? Oxytet stopped my active infection cold (in just 3 days), but it still left me with infected colonies and dirty boxes.

And I'll say it, in case you feel the same way: I was ashamed and blamed myself and I agonized over whether to treat, or not. And I dithered too long over the decision - kept going back to the idea that once I needed to treat I'd always be have to keep going, or that I was perpetuating weak genetics. My view these days is: if you've got a confirmed case, just do shook swarms on to clean equipment and treat immediately and move on. In other words: don't dither. Your bees have acquired a treatable bacterial infection. The cure for active infection is Oxytet. The best way to reduce equipment losses and to prevent long-term chronic disease is to get them off the dirty combs and into clean boxes ASAP. And make sure you don't allow any swarming from an infected hive. Do whatever you have to do to prevent that, as a point of public health. Use extreme cross-contamination infection prevention program (clean tools and gloves for each hive, every time). Close your yard to any beekeeping visitors, or if you allow visits, lend them clothing and tools which stay in your yard. Find every yard within your foraging area and warm other beekeepers to BOLO for the signs. Don;t sell or'give away hives, nucs, or queens. Make no increase, unless forced to stop a swarm, so as to reduce as much as possible equipment with known, or even possible exposure to an outbreak that will nee irradiation, or other aggressive handling to rid it of EFB contamination, in the short run.


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## squarepeg

many thanks for all that nancy, and also to those of you who took time to send pm's. it's times like these that being tapped into a first class community such as this one means everything.

cliff notes version:

positive field test by '_vita_ honeybee (european) foulbrood test kit'

reported outbreak to state apiarist

will provide state apiarist samples to run in his lab, as well as send some off to beltsville

oxytet prescription obtained from dvm and filled

self imposed strict quarantine, cancelled nuc orders

euthanized colonies less than five deep frames of bees

moved 3 infected but stronger colonies to a 'hospital' yard away from any known kept bees, getting their first round of oxytet tomorrow

(more detailed version to be posted on my thread when i catch my breath)


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> could this be the video you are referring to lharder?
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U&feature=youtu.be
> 
> (highly recommended viewing to anyone wanting to get up to speed on efb, and my starting point for further inquiry into some of the ground covered in the video)
> 
> it turns out there are 35 different 'sequence types' of efb. the various types are differentiated from each other using a molecular genetic technique referred to as 'mlst', which stands for 'multi-locus sequence typing'.
> 
> it appears that efb typing is being used to determine the course of action for remediation. choices include shook swarm, oxytetracylcline, or destruction (burning) depending on the efb type.
> 
> preventative measures such as arranging apiaries to minimize drift and avoiding the mixing and matching of equipment/resources are also discussed.



Yes that is the one. Destruction would work for all types and would be the default tf option. Once it hits (its just a matter of time right?), I guess destruction and aggressive removal of contaminated hives, and decontamination of comb using our ionization facility would be my course of action. And of course robbing screens to reduce drift. Those I hope to put on earlier that later this year as soon as I can make them. Perhaps, requeening together with shaking onto good comb could be used, but would leave more lingering doubt in my mind. I would not use antibiotics as they make bees more susceptible to other infections such as Nosema. I am just starting to read papers by Nance Moran about bee gut microbiota. Not sure if I would want to disrupt that in my bees as in theory it could be a destroying a valuable resource.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> I am just starting to read papers by Nance Moran about bee gut microbiota. Not sure if I would want to disrupt that in my bees as in theory it could be a destroying a valuable resource.


i also place a high value having the microbiota inside the cavity and including the colony not be disturbed once having reached a balanced and healthy ecosystem but,

what might be the lesser of the evils?

losing a microbiota and genetics that combined have seven winters survival and have produced average or above average honey crop,

losing all of the microbiota and genetics after the colony reaches full collapse just because it happened to catch a tummy ache from it's neighbor,

or insert human intervention into a system despite its having an exceptional track record over time in the hopes of preserving the genetics and or what microbiota survives the human intervention, in the case using a selective synthesized antibiotic?


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## squarepeg

here are a couple of short videos from about 8 years ago presented by dr. jamie ellis, the gahan endowed associate professor of entomology in the department of entomology and nematology at the university of florida.

my take at this point in my review of the literature is that he is under-representing the impact of the disease at both colony and the apiary levels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=05tCHtUyNHM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyiaV222JoQ&feature=player_embedded


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## Cloverdale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U

National Honey Show UK , AFB/EFB Typing and CBPV. A worthwhile video. Deb


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## squarepeg

thanks deb, that link was provided in post #12.

have you experienced efb yet?


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> i also place a high value having the microbiota inside the cavity and including the colony not be disturbed once having reached a balanced and healthy ecosystem but,
> 
> what might be the lesser of the evils?
> 
> losing a microbiota and genetics that combined have seven winters survival and have produced average or above average honey crop,
> 
> losing all of the microbiota and genetics after the colony reaches full collapse just because it happened to catch a tummy ache from it's neighbor,
> 
> or insert human intervention into a system despite its having an exceptional track record over time in the hopes of preserving the genetics and or what microbiota survives the human intervention, in the case using a selective synthesized antibiotic?


Mine wasn't a criticism sp. Just my own strategy. Destruction, isolation of frames, isolation of equipment, ionization of frames equipment, no nuc sales. I'm in general agreement, I assume my microbiota/genetics will be reasonably well represented by colonies not symptomatic and not destroyed.


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## Juhani Lunden

Instructions in case of brood diseases in Finland: 
It is not allowed to use antibiotics in beekeeping. In case of EFB the use of antibiotics is also considered unnecessary and harmfull. EFB does not make spores and the main cause is colony stress. 

Usually a colony with minor EFB outbreak will survive by itself, only give time to heal. 
Serious outbreak will need about the same procedure as AFB. 

In a small outbreak of AFB (just couple infected larvae): shaking bees to clean frames, and feeding with sugar.
Serious AFB: burning frames and bees, disinfection of boxes (flaming, Virkon S solution wash).

Sometimes EFB and AFB are hard to distinguish. Even laboratories have sometimes difficulties, because EFB bacteria grows so wildly, and there are so many different forms of it, that it can cover other, possible AFB, bacteria.


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## Cloverdale

squarepeg said:


> thanks deb, that link was provided in post #12.
> 
> have you experienced efb yet?


oops


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## crofter

It seems that some sources can rightfully claim that EFB was/is easy to control. Now it appears to be coming to light that there are many different strains of the disease, some of which definitely are more virulent and persistant; easier to initiate and longer surviving on comb.

Up until about a year ago the ease of obtaining OxyTet and similar antibiotics and their use to routinely treat hives may have kept a lot of EFB (and AFB) hidden. I think there should be a lot more emphasis and awareness, esp. for new beekeepers and also many who have years in the business when the disease was rare and easily swept under the rug.

EFB is quite easy to spot when it is active but not so easy to identify at times when there is no brood. In other words easy to miss on a dead out. I am not sure yet about my diagnosis of suffocation by snow and dead bees blocking entrances. Could be EFB prevented the start of normal mandatory spring broodup. So far just storing those hives.

I have several nucs on order that I will set up on new equipment and watch them carefully.


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## Beebeard

Lots of good info here. Thanks.
I caught a whiff of smell coming from this hive the day before that concerned me. When I got the chance the next day, I put on the veil and brought the smoker and hive tool out. First frame showed dead developing larvae slumped down in the cells. There were scattered capped cells with apparently normal capping, not sunken at all. I grabbed a stic and tried the stick test on 7 or 8 and the contents of the normal cells came out milky white and not stringy at all. The dead open larvae also didn’t make the string. Quite a number of the dead larvae looked fairly mature and had that head up canoe shape I’ve read about with sac brood. Now I’m not as sure which I have, so I need to send in a sample. In the mean time,I’m going to shake them into a nuc and bag the combs and frames into the freezer, probably will end up burning them. 
As soon as I got done inspecting, I carried my smoker back to the garage with the hive tool, washed my hands thoroughly (I inspect bare hand), scorched the hive tool and wiped the smoker down with alcohol (once it was out, because boom!)
Now I’ve got to clean all my cutout equipment even more thoroughly. Fortunately I haven’t done another yet. I usually bag cutout combs into the freezer then set them out in late summer to let the robbers clean it up. That bag is going right in my next fire.


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## squarepeg

Beebeard said:


> Now I’m not as sure which I have, so I need to send in a sample.


in alabama the state apiarist will come and collect samples and analyze them in the state lab for free.

you can mail samples to the usda bee lab in beltsville, maryland and they will analyze them for free.

you can purchase a field testing kit from a bee supplier, for example:

https://www.mannlakeltd.com/efb-european-foulbrood-test-kit


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## Cloverdale

Beebeard said:


> Lots of good info here. Thanks.
> I caught a whiff of smell coming from this hive the day before that concerned me. When I got the chance the next day, I put on the veil and brought the smoker and hive tool out. First frame showed dead developing larvae slumped down in the cells. There were scattered capped cells with apparently normal capping, not sunken at all. I grabbed a stic and tried the stick test on 7 or 8 and the contents of the normal cells came out milky white and not stringy at all. The dead open larvae also didn’t make the string. Quite a number of the dead larvae looked fairly mature and had that head up canoe shape I’ve read about with sac brood. Now I’m not as sure which I have, so I need to send in a sample. In the mean time,I’m going to shake them into a nuc and bag the combs and frames into the freezer, probably will end up burning them.
> As soon as I got done inspecting, I carried my smoker back to the garage with the hive tool, washed my hands thoroughly (I inspect bare hand), scorched the hive tool and wiped the smoker down with alcohol (once it was out, because boom!)
> Now I’ve got to clean all my cutout equipment even more thoroughly. Fortunately I haven’t done another yet. I usually bag cutout combs into the freezer then set them out in late summer to let the robbers clean it up. That bag is going right in my next fire.


Sacbrood is a virus that kills brood. It may appear at any time during the brood-rearing season. It does not usually cause severe losses. Managing treatment: 
•	Requeen with a new queen; or preferred hygienic stock.
•	Replace heavily infected comb with fresh drawn comb or foundation.
•	Maintain strong, healthy colonies
This was from one of my virus booklets.


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## Fusion_power

SP, I have not had EFB or AFB in more years than I can count, but dealt with both in the past. EFB is easily cleared with oxytetracycline. Fortunately, most bees will eliminate EFB on their own if given time. I treated EFB with Oxy about 30 years ago and requeened the colonies. There were no recurrences.

The $65000 question is where did it come from. EFB can be brought in with infected equipment. It is far more likely that a nearby beekeeper had a colony collapse with disease that your bees robbed out.


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## WesternWilson

I usually get one or two cases of EFB a year. Last year I had 8, this year 7 and counting. It may be that a nearby infected and neglected apiary caused the big breakout last year. This year I think the bees got at equipment bagged for sterilization (rats had chewed holes in the bags, and the sterilization facility only allows small beekeepers a few days in spring) in late winter. I removed the equipment right away but I think the damage was done: I had hoped that 6 months and a few hard freezes would have meant the robbing did no harm, but alas it seems I was wrong. This experience suggests that at least locally we have a pretty durable strain of EFB around.

I have over the years done the medicate-shook swarm-medicate protocol. While it is usually successful, it is not always successful. And the colonies are so set back they take all season to recover. So....since that method requires medication that is now hard to obtain, and was always expensive, and a set of new equipment, and the bees really struggle to rebuild....I now euthanize once I get a positive Vita Life test kit result; it is important to prevent spread.

Euthanasia with a big bottle of rubbing alcohol when all the bees are home and in cluster (night) is quick and as merciful as it gets.

I have not found that EFB just clears up by itself, in a flow, when the bees are fed etc. It just gets worse and worse and spreads. I know some Canadian researchers were looking at samples last year to see if there are different strains. I suspect there are tougher types of EFB around these days. 

Countries with low foulbrood rates practice no tolerance for the condition, euthanizing affected colonies and destroying/sterilizing all equipment. That may weed out "poor genetics" but I think we are wrong to place too much blame on the bees. The larger benefit is that euthanasia and equipment burning/sterilization reduces the available pool of foulbrood to be passed around.


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## squarepeg

i appreciate the feedback dar. i suspect the efb originated from nearby imported colonies that became deadout under the care of beginning beekeepers but i have no way to know for sure.




WesternWilson said:


> And the colonies are so set back they take all season to recover...
> 
> I have not found that EFB just clears up by itself, in a flow...
> 
> I know some Canadian researchers were looking at samples last year to see if there are different strains. I suspect there are tougher types of EFB around these days.


i was very surprised to see how quickly the population of strong overwintered colonies became depleted even though were were having an excellent flow and they were building up very nicely coming out of winter. most were not worth trying to save by the time i got my field tests and antibiotics in.

so far:

8 colonies euthanized

3 colonies moved to isolated 'hospital' yard and...

1 colony shook swarmed but absconded prior to being given terramycin

1 colony shook swarmed and given terramycin, already dwindled badly but treated as more of an experiment to check for antibiotic resistance

1 colony is recovering without treatment and the last capped brood frame is showing improvement from less than half the cells reaching capping stage to over 80% capped.


hopefully the u.s. and canada will adopt and make available efb typing which appears to have a lot to do with guiding the course of action in the u.k. as seen in the video linked above.


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## msl

> I have not found that EFB just clears up by itself, in a flow, when the bees are fed etc. It just gets worse and worse and spreads


yep... that was my experience as well, old vs new I guess.
My it took me a while to see it, my bees are fairly hygienic so sick larva was being removed, the hives just didn't take off and build up... by the time I knew what was up it seems to have gotten in the cell builder...
My TF roots boned me, all the "old" advice was really appealing... I tried waiting for the flow to get better, then shook swarming, etc. Antibiotic was a line I swore I never would cross,(but like mite treatments, I did) but when I did it was much later than was good for my bees, I lost/put down a lot of hives and I ended up taking huge winter losses. 

EFB is a bit of an odd duck, hygienic behavior is ineffective against it, and in fact, Hygienic stocks tend to be EFB susceptible, something to think about in terms of VSH and selecting for mite resistance.


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## Juhani Lunden

msl said:


> yep... that was my experience as well, old vs new I guess.
> Hygienic stocks tend to be EFB susceptible, something to think about in terms of VSH and selecting for mite resistance.


Maybe it is EFB that I have had all these years, and not AFB. Sort of dissapointing…

It is just that awfull smell, which is not sour, it is much worse, which has said to me this must be AFB. When trying to make the stick test, it usually is not at all sticky, but of course everything rotting and wet organic material is somewhat sticky. I don’t know. But as I said, the smell is something that I have made up my mind years ago: this is AFB. And that there usually are some sunken, usually more like torn apart and broken, capped larvae cells in the late phase of this disease.

Once I posted one or two honey samples to a field survey and when the results came I remember the advisor told me that there is no AFB in my honey but “EFB is growing so wildly that I´m really surprised if you don´t have some serious problems!” Which I didn´t. He added that sometimes in these situations the EFB bacteria growth overruns the growth of AFB. But again, maybe it was only EFB.

The EFB has become more aggressive if this really is EFB what I have had, one or two hives every year so long I can remember. I have shaken them to clean combs, given food frames from clean hives, that’s all. One of the biggest beekeepers in Finland, Mesimestari (who actually has now sold all his hives and concentrating in packaging honey and selling equipment) had to buy ozone treatment machinery to clean combs. So bad was his situation with EFB. 

It is well known that acetic acid kills EFB bacteria, too. Didn´t know anything about ozone. 

When lecturing or writing I have very openly told other beekeepers about having foul brood problems in my beekeeping. Often have I gotten that comment that I´m putting too much stress on my bees, foul brood disease and no mite treatments. Many have considered that a combination impossible to win. 

Maybe the fact that we have in Finland the worst foul brood situation in whole Europe has been an advantage to me, maybe bees in Finland have some resistance towards these diseases. 
As I have told many times, there are several beekeepers saying that my bees have good resistance towards brood disease. Knowing how many years I have had it, I´m not at all surprised if there was some truth in these comments. I even have used some sick hives to build queen cells. Some rot, some survive.


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## enjambres

I also am coming to the opinion that a lot of the old "expert" wisdom about EFB, either doesn't hold up anymore or or only was valid when a large share of the managed bee population in the US was routinely treated with antibiotics, even in the absence of symptoms, or maybe was never true. I don't know.

Knock on wood, I have so far seemed to have left it behind, this year. But at huge cost to my hive count (I am down to only four colonies), and to my pocketbook after buying multiple sets of brand new equipment, and endless hours of extra work and worry since it first appeared here three years ago. And I did treat, finally.

Although we blame varroa for nearly every problem these days (with good reason) I think the varroa crisis may be obscuring co-existing, perhaps now increasing, problems with EFB. In my yard, I control varroa with intensive monitoring and pro-active - not reactive - treatment. (Though the work of intensive monitoring buys me the chance to treat fewer times per year and still get excellent control.) So, perhaps the EFB issue is more visible. 

I think I am going to give acetic acid treatment (for the equipment) a try this summer, since I have been unable to organize a trip to a gamma radiation facility that uses 15KGrays. 

If I am truly past the crisis, I will be making increase this year - which I have not done in four years - as I am down to just one colony apiece in two of my four long-running queenlines, having lost one queen line (of my original four) entirely.

EFB sucks!

Nancy


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## Bdfarmer555

At the Missouri spring conference this year, I attended a class regarding EFB. 

They recommended a shook swarm onto new frames. Then a few days later doing it again. Said that the bacteria could live in honey stored in the honey stomachs and be transferred to the new frames. The idea was that any honey would be used to start building comb the first time. As soon as the second shook swarm was done, to begin a feeding, I believe with antibiotics. All used equipment should then be burned, including the first set of shook swarm equipment.


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## crofter

Bdfarmer555 said:


> At the Missouri spring conference this year, I attended a class regarding EFB.
> 
> They recommended a shook swarm onto new frames. Then a few days later doing it again. Said that the bacteria could live in honey stored in the honey stomachs and be transferred to the new frames. The idea was that any honey would be used to start building comb the first time. As soon as the second shook swarm was done, to begin a feeding, I believe with antibiotics. All used equipment should then be burned, including the first set of shook swarm equipment.


The really scary part is that the reservoir of disease may not even be in your own apiary! If it is being brought in from surrounding bees, either feral or managed colonies, it puts you on a treadmill. 

To do the most assured eradication method of the double shakedown involving destroying two sets of new equipment, would be very costly. If you also had to buy new bees it would be prohibitively expensive for many people. Without assurance that it would even be successful it could surely dampen your enthusiasm.

I am down from 13, to 1 apparently health colony. I have a couple of nucs on order for a trial. This summer will decide whether I am out of beekeeping or not.


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## lharder

I think this thread is very timely. I will be keeping an eye out for this scourge. Euthanasia, equipment destruction will be my strategy. Luckily my bees and equipment are not so expensive. 

Some of our problems are proper isolation of equipment. I have plans to get a 40 ft container for unused boxes. Be real helpful to have to store contaminated boxes until they could be ionized or properly disposed of.


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## lharder

crofter said:


> The really scary part is that the reservoir of disease may not even be in your own apiary! If it is being brought in from surrounding bees, either feral or managed colonies, it puts you on a treadmill.
> 
> To do the most assured eradication method of the double shakedown involving destroying two sets of new equipment, would be very costly. If you also had to buy new bees it would be prohibitively expensive for many people. Without assurance that it would even be successful it could surely dampen your enthusiasm.
> 
> I am down from 13, to 1 apparently health colony. I have a couple of nucs on order for a trial. This summer will decide whether I am out of beekeeping or not.


I think feral bees would quickly develop resistance should a new efb type come through but for a while it would be miserable. I am interested to see how studied feral bees do should an disease outbreak like this hit them. They seem pretty resilient and recover quickly. 

Very sorry you have lost so many hives Frank. All these problems are transitory it seems, so I hope you keep a toe in it until the situation resolves itself. Know a keeper who quit after varroa hit, then made his way back into it.


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## crofter

Why do you think those feral bees are so magical I hope you are right.

Uncertainty makes a person jump at shadows. I still dont know for certain that I suffocated colonies last winter. Just failed to commence brood up. Something that killed the queens could give similar symptoms. No sign of laying workers but dont know whether that would happen with rapidly decreasing populations. With no larvae to examine a person loses his main evidence to assess EFB

I also have one very weak colony that apparently has no queen to which I donated a frame with healty bees and all stages of eggs etc., to see what they will do with it re starting cells and will check to see if the brood continues healthy or shows slumpy discoloured EFB signs. 

If I am really lucky EFB signs wont develop. I will be happy then to know I goofed up and allowed them to suffocate. They appeared healthy going into winter and were strong until late winter: perhaps I did get rid of the EFB last season. If so I will be able to repopulate those hives I have stored away.

I have a couple of Dadant deep frame hives built and an observation hive that I was looking forward to playing with. Such anticipation keeps us going!

Like Nancy said "EFB sucks"!


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## Fusion_power

> Why do you think those feral bees are so magical I hope you are right.


 They aren't magical, but their level of genetic diversity is very high compared to the average commercial queen in the U.S. Genetic diversity gives them a better chance of having genetics to resist diseases.



> Hygienic stocks tend to be EFB susceptible


 I agree that previous testing seemed to indicate that hygienic bees were EFB susceptible, but it is not proven that there is a linkage between the traits. In other words, it is very likely that bees can be selected for both hygienic behavior and EFB resistance. This would be a very good question to investigate for a breeding program.

We had problems with both AFB and EFB prior to the mass die off of bees in the late 1980's and early 1990's. As the number of colonies in an area decreased, disease problems disappeared. The only case of AFB I saw in that time frame was in 1997 near Gadsden Alabama when a friend asked me to check one of his colonies. It was heavily infected with AFB. We burned it that night. The colony had been purchased from a beekeeper near Albertville and was a recently established colony put into 20 year old equipment. I suspect the equipment had spores that infected the colony.

Two things help with diseases, keeping fewer colonies per yard, and regular comb renewal. Comb renewal in particular is associated with healthier colonies of bees. This is one of the reasons I am renewing quite a few of my Dadant combs this year. The combs being renewed are from 2016 when I moved my bees into square Dadant equipment. I am not having to deal with a disease so the comb renewal is purely for preventive reasons. I expect to renew about 1/4 of the combs in my hives each year going forward. This is fairly easy to do with spring splits by letting each split build a few new combs while culling older combs. Brother Adam wrote that comb renewal is an important factor in disease prevention.


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## WesternWilson

Leroy, feral bees in the old days lived so far apart there was little drift between colonies. Any colony with brood disease would simply have struggled and died out. I expect the reason we have a lot of drift between bees in an apiary and between apiaries nearby is that bees never had to develop an ability to go home to a specific 1' window. The only colony for a mile or two was their own! See a colony = getting home....you just needed to be close-ish.

But now we keep them in apiaries, and in my area we are close to banks of pollination bees in the nearby blueberry fields in summer and also in winter if they are guested on local fields as winter yards. Density = drift.

This density drives the sharing of disease and pests. And alas, the pests and diseases can shift their genome far faster than bees do (and are not further challenged by the bees' multiple drone father reproduction strategy, which exerts a very strong pressure against fixing traits). Any kind of resistance you might breed into bees will push the pest/disease genome to a more successful strategy.

Until the foulbrood vaccines (now in research and development) are available, the best defense against pests and disease is to limit their concentration in the bee landscape. This is why countries who practice rigourous euthanasia and equipment destruction/sterilization have low incidences of foulbrood. There ends up being a lot less disease to get around, and the appearance of foulbrood is time-limited, which time limits the opportunity for spread. They also control for mites, which apparently can vector EFB.

I suspect the constant medication of bees to suppress foulbrood also drove the production of ever more resistant and virulent foulbroods. Bee shipping and mobile pollination help move those pathogens around?


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## WesternWilson

Juhani Lunden said:


> Maybe it is EFB that I have had all these years, and not AFB.


Although I strongly advocate the use of test kits, I have found so far that it is very clear what you are looking at, maybe my local EFB and AFB are different, but FWIW:

EFB: affects larvae PRE-capping...you see youngish larvae dry, yellowing and dying. Older larvae die and if old enough die twisted snout up against the side of the cell (the famous "tummy ache position"). They turn a dirty yellow-brown and quickly rot down into a grey-brownish gelatinous goo. The remains are not elastic and stringy. Scale looks golden brown like crispy fried chicken skin (hope you are not having dinner).

AFB: affects larvae POST-capping. Capping looks rough, sunken, and/or often has ragged off-centre holes or cracks. Larvae dies and rots into a dark orange-brown snotty goo that strings out easily. Scale tends to be black-brown.

Odour: there is none until the condition is catastrophically advanced and by that time has probably spread into nearby hives. Early detection through frequent inspections is critical in control.

Brood Pattern: because the bees try to remove dead brood, you are left with a shotty brood pattern. Although that can also be a feature of a failing queen, the difference is in foulbrood the queen tries to re-lay up the empty cells, so you end up with brood of all ages mixed in that shotty frame. I see that now and my heart goes cold...and I immediately look for the dead and dying brood....and get out my test kits. 

Although I am pretty confident in what I am seeing, I also test with the Vita Life test kits. I cannot recommend them highly enough. They give you the confidence to quickly formulate an effective plan for swift remediation and containment of spread.


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## msl

Fusion_power said:


> They aren't magical, but their level of genetic diversity is very high compared to the average commercial queen in the U.S. Genetic diversity gives them a better chance of having genetics to resist diseases.


A commly held belief that seems not so much in at least the post varroa age, moving bee means moving genetics 

“the feral bees in our study region are of recent origin, we found higher genetic diversity in managed than feral honey bee colonies”
“Feral bees had a stronger immune response, even though they were less diverse. However, our findings indicate that the increased genetic diversity of managed A. mellifera may not bear fitness benefits thatcorrelate with immunocompetence. Our results support that management increases genetic diversity in honey bees probably as a result of admixture among progenitor populations as honey bee queens are shipped among regions (Harpur et al. 2012). Domesticated species are generally thought to be less genetically diverse than are their wild relatives (Wang et al. 2014). However, honey bees are unique in that feral bees are derived from domesticated lines in their nonnative range. In addition, honey bees, even when managed, undergo a mix of local breeding, regional dispersal, and natural reproduction among hives from different sources. Yet, what is interesting is that despite this diversity of managed bees, they are less rather than more immunocompetent than the feral populations, suggesting that while diversity matters to immune function, so may the ability of natural selection to increase the frequency of resistant varieties.” 

López-Uribe1 Et Al 2017 http://elsakristen.com/docs/LopezUribe_2017_Apis_diversity_immunity.pdf
Diversity is a double edge sword, ferals have had diversity removed as they have been subject to MORE selective pressures… think about it, the whole point of a bond program is a whole bunch of the diversity dies off. 




Fusion_power said:


> I agree that previous testing seemed to indicate that hygienic bees were EFB susceptible, but it is not proven that there is a linkage between the traits. In other words, it is very likely that bees can be selected for both hygienic behavior and EFB resistance.


Problem is you can’t select for what you don’t have. Hygienic behavior stocks were sussfully selected do to the ability to easily empirically test the trait.
But it has been done.. The early Weaver program was left with EFB/chalk plagued stocks after bonding out a few thousand hives, they had to work very hard to combine efb/mite restiance 
it has also failed, Kefuss was able to turn around the EFB issues in his Chile stock, but never got the mite restiance up top TF like he had in France



lharder said:


> I think feral bees would quickly develop resistance should a new efb type come through but for a while it would be miserable. I am interested to see how studied feral bees do should an disease outbreak like this hit them.


Well I am not sure they developed genetic resistance to the old EFB to begin with, centuries of “bond” and bees are still sustibult to it 
in his book (1853) Quimby notes “Mr. Weeks, in a communication to the N.E. Farmer, says, "Since the potato rot commenced, I have lost one-fourth of my stocks annually, by this disease;" 

“Mr. Quimby said foulbrood was not as bad in 1870 as it had been ten years earlier. (This was probably because Italian queens were just being introduced and they are more resistant to European foulbrood)”
https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...story+of+the+empire+state+honey+producers.pdf

About 100 years of “bond” between Quimby recognizing foulbrood and the “invention” of antibiotics… and it still plagues us as it plaged them pre treatment era


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## Fusion_power

Now that deserves more information. On a local level, feral bees would tend to stabilize genetics meaning that bringing in managed bees would increase diversity "OF THE FERALS". On a regional or nationwide basis, would you argue that the managed or feral bees have more diversity? Be careful with this one as there is indeed a study showing very low genetic diversity in commercial queens.

This is more telling.

"These findings suggest that genetic diversity is positively associated with immunocompetence in feral honey bee colonies, and that the benefits of genetic diversity are obscured in managed bees, perhaps as a result of artificial selection. We hypothesize that high genetic variability provides the raw material upon which natural selection acts and generates adaptive genotypes in unmanaged populations. Feral populations could be useful sources of genetic variation to use in breeding programs that aim to improve honey bee health."

Seems to me that this counters most of what you attempted to posit.

As for selecting for EFB resistance, that would be fairly easy to do empirically. Set up disease challenge experiments. One way it could be done non-destructively would be to capture a test population from each colony and challenge them with EFB to see which are least affected. Then breed from the colonies that have the best test results.

The study you quoted is testing for "immunocompetence". While it is a valid research result, this was not shown to correlate directly with EFB or AFB resistance. It is kind of like having general disease resistance to bacteria, but maybe still susceptible to viruses or vice versa.

This does not come even close to the common house fly which has resistance genes far more advanced than most other insects. If the honeybee had the resistance genes of the house fly, we might currently be overwhelmed with hordes of honeybees.


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## msl

Fusion_power said:


> On a regional or nationwide basis, would you argue that the managed or feral bees have more diversity?


Harper EtAl 2012 Management increases genetic diversity of honey bees via admixture.

_"Reduced genetic diversity is a common feature of domesticated animal and plant populations (Brufordet al. 2003) that has been implicated as a cause of col-ony declines in honey bees (Oldroyd 2007; vanEngels-dorp & Meixner 2010). However, we observe an opposite pattern: managed populations have more genetic diversity when compared with their progenitors in E. and W. Europe"_


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## squarepeg

Fusion_power said:


> Two things help with diseases, keeping fewer colonies per yard, and regular comb renewal. Comb renewal in particular is associated with healthier colonies of bees.... I expect to renew about 1/4 of the combs in my hives each year going forward. This is fairly easy to do with spring splits by letting each split build a few new combs while culling older combs. Brother Adam wrote that comb renewal is an important factor in disease prevention.


i really apprecicate you sharing that dar.

as i sort through my deadout frames i am noticing that more often than not the dying broodnests are on the oldest combs that date back to 2010 and early 2011. i'm able to date them back to then because i started with different types of frames and foundation and then switched.

most of these older frames have already been put on the burn pile because they were too nasty with dead brood, old stale pollen, and even entombed pollen; all of which are next to impossible to clean up. 

i plan to reduce the number of hives per yard to some degree, but mostly i plan to spread them out as much as i can to individual spots putting distance between them and facing them in different directions. i'm taking my 8 foot long wooden stands that have been holding a row of three hives each and cutting them up into 4 two foot single hive stands.

i'll also minimize the sharing equipment from one hive to the next. this will put a dent in my checkerboarding ect. but i like the idea of feeding in new frames each year. performing an artificial swarm on most hives early in the build up and replacing those frames with new foundationless frames is likely the way i'll go with that.


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## Hunajavelho

msl said:


> EFB is a bit of an odd duck, hygienic behavior is ineffective against it, and in fact, Hygienic stocks tend to be EFB susceptible, something to think about in terms of VSH and selecting for mite resistance.


In Denmark they had serious problem with AFB in the 90's and started a breeding program, selecting for hygienic behaviour. First they selected for 100% in 48 hours and now they have been selecting several years for 100% removed in less than 24 hours. There is zero tolerance to compromise regarding this. All queen breeders and producers are involved and all breeder queens are selected for no less than 100% in 24h. They also have zero tolerance for nosema. 

Now a days they have no or very little problems with AFB, EFB , chalkbrood or sacbrood. 
In 20 years they have improved their bees., so that export is now a big part of their queen sales.

VSH behaviour might be a different case...


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## Juhani Lunden

WesternWilson said:


> Although I strongly advocate the use of test kits, I have found so far that it is very clear what you are looking at, maybe my local EFB and AFB are different, but FWIW:
> 
> EFB: affects larvae PRE-capping...you see youngish larvae dry, yellowing and dying. Older larvae die and if old enough die twisted snout up against the side of the cell (the famous "tummy ache position"). They turn a dirty yellow-brown and quickly rot down into a grey-brownish gelatinous goo. The remains are not elastic and stringy. Scale looks golden brown like crispy fried chicken skin (hope you are not having dinner).
> 
> AFB: affects larvae POST-capping. Capping looks rough, sunken, and/or often has ragged off-centre holes or cracks. Larvae dies and rots into a dark orange-brown snotty goo that strings out easily. Scale tends to be black-brown.
> 
> Odour: there is none until the condition is catastrophically advanced and by that time has probably spread into nearby hives. Early detection through frequent inspections is critical in control.
> 
> Brood Pattern: because the bees try to remove dead brood, you are left with a shotty brood pattern. Although that can also be a feature of a failing queen, the difference is in foulbrood the queen tries to re-lay up the empty cells, so you end up with brood of all ages mixed in that shotty frame. I see that now and my heart goes cold...and I immediately look for the dead and dying brood....and get out my test kits.


I wish it was that simple. Anyway, the procedure I do is always the same. Shaking(once) to clean frames, food frames from clean hives.


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## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> ...the procedure I do is always the same. Shaking(once) to clean frames, food frames from clean hives.


by shaking to 'clean' frames do you mean frame with no drawn comb on them or frame with comb from 'clean' hives?


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> by shaking to 'clean' frames do you mean frame with no drawn comb on them or frame with comb from 'clean' hives?


They are drawn frames from any clean colony. And by clean I mean no visible signs of sickness, but as my honey samples testified there might be bacteria in them. But breeding for disease resistance needs diseases.

The sick hives frames are marked with red pen, to recognize, and melted when autumn comes.


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## squarepeg

understood juhani, thanks for the reply.


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## squarepeg

a copy of the email i sent to beltsville this am:

"Greetings Dr. Evans,


My name is **** and I am a beekeeper located in northeastern Alabama.

I had a recent outbreak of what appears to be a quite virulent strain of EFB. I first I noticed poor capped brood patterns and discolored young larvae in a few colonies in late March of this year. Not having experienced EFB prior to this I misinterpreted what I was seeing as chilled brood.

After realizing it wasn’t chilled brood I ordered VITA test kits for EFB. There was about a two week delay from ordering to receiving the kits and having the time and weather to do the sampling. Test results were postitive.

From late March to late April, 5 out of 9 colonies in one yard and 5 out of 11 colonies in another yard succumbed and dwindled so badly that I euthanized them. 3 out of 3 colonies at another yard are not affected as of yet. I went ahead and obtained a VFD for terramycin and now have it on hand for possible use going forward.

I have since discovered that there are several new beekeepers within flying distance of the affected yards who have imported bees from out of the area. None of them have successfully overwintered a colony resulting in almost 20 deadouts over the past 3 years. I can’t be sure but I'm guessing this to be the most likely source.

I have been combing the literature and trying to bring myself up to speed with EFB. I have a few questions that I hope you may be able to help with.

1. I see that in the U.K. MLST is being performed on isolates from the VITA test kits to determine the sequence type and to some degree suggesting a course of action for remediation. Is anything like being done here in the U.S.? 

2. Does Beltsville test positive EFB samples sent to it for resistance and sensitivity to Terramycin? 

3. I was surprised to learn that melissococcus plutonius can survive in honey and on comb for quite a long time and exposure to it can result in new infections. Are you able to confirm that this is happening based on your experience with the samples sent in for processing at the Bee Research Lab?

4. After euthanizing the colonies I brought in the equipment to include quite a few honey supers of drawn comb most of which had not been filled with new honey yet. I have washed this comb with mild pressure from the garden hose, use an air compressor to dry it, and then applied a spray of 3% bleach. Is it possible to have this comb sampled to see if it still holds melissococcus plutonius?

5. I am currently speaking with a gentleman who has an adjunct position at Alabama A & M University in Huntsville. He is involved with their irradiation lab. I am interested in having all of the equipment irradiated, but it doesn’t look like that facility is going to work for this application. Are you aware of any industrial irradiation facilities (other than Sterigenics in New Jersey) that offer sterilization of bee equipment?


Sincere thanks,

****"


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## squarepeg

a few lessons learned:

1. it was a little over 2 weeks from the time i realized i needed efb field test kits and had them in hand on a non-rainy day to perform the test. part of this was not considering efb when i first saw sick larvae. part of this had to do with placing the order during the suppliers' peak busy season. opportunity was lost with respect to trying to save the colonies as well opportunity was gained with respect to the spreading to neighboring colonies.

2. it was even longer than that before i had terramycin on hand. it took a couple of days to get the vfd (veterinary feed directive) from the vet in order and again the wait time on delivery.

3. the first terramycin i received is a product called 'tetroxy hca-280 soluble powder'. this stuff is 10 times more concentrated that the commercially available powders available from bee suppy companies. only 2 tablespoons has to be mixed with 2.5 lbs of powdered sugar to get it to the appropriate strength, and i don't have the means to blend in a way to ensure a uniform mix. it took only 1/8 tablespoon of this stuff to mix with 1 quart of syrup.

i think it would be prudent for all to consider having a test kit or two on hand.

technically vfd's are not supposed to be issued without a confirmed case, but if you happen to be friends with a vet...

it would also be prudent to have some kind of plan in place with respect to treatment or not, euthanization, destruction, removal to an isolated yard, ect. should this bug rear it's ugly head in your apiary.


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## squarepeg

Eric_B said:


> I was checking my hives yesterday and saw what looked like EFB in two hives. There was no smell, but they had poor brood patterns and yellow/brown larva. One hive had been weak all spring but I thought it was just a failing queen, but the other had been strong until this inspection. Is there anything else it could be or of EFB a safe assumption?
> 
> View attachment 48315






squarepeg said:


> looks just like the efb i have.




(i copied eric's post here because of the good description and photo)


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

I kill the queen if signs of EFB arise and there are low mite levels. Mites can stress bees to the point where Efb looking symptoms arise. Elminating the mites and having a flow or feed on, often clears this up. As far as removing combs I have never noticed bees performing better on young combs. My bees are doing great in 16 year old combs that have all had viruses and efb at some point.


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## WesternWilson

Tennessee's Bees LLC said:


> I kill the queen if signs of EFB arise and there are low mite levels. Mites can stress bees to the point where Efb looking symptoms arise. Elminating the mites and having a flow or feed on, often clears this up. As far as removing combs I have never noticed bees performing better on young combs. My bees are doing great in 16 year old combs that have all had viruses and efb at some point.


Mite stress on bees can definitely produce what is commonly called Varroasis, and which looks a lot like foulbrood. This is why using the Vita Life test kits is so important. You absolutely need to know what you are dealing with before making decisions/following advice.

As mentioned earlier, other things can look like European Foulbrood (EFB). Chilling, starvation, varroasis. But those things will not give you a positive test result with the EFB test kit, and can be remediated by feeding and improved management.

EFB (and AFB) are not, in my experience, cleared up by anything short of drastic measures involving oxytetracycline, shook swarming and sterilization/destruction of all affected equipment. And even then, if the source of your EFB/AFB is outside your control you are going to be reinfected.

If drift bees are bringing foulbrood into your apiary you can (once you address your own affected colonies) put on robbing screens. If your bees are robbing out infected colonies, there is nothing you can do but move your bees away from the source of infection.

As SquarePeg has noted, once you have actual foulbrood in your operation, it can be a real struggle to get it out.


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## wildbranch2007

ok so what does everyone do to kill the hive with out spreading the EFB, we have had 3 people that have never used chemicals come down with EFB, had never seen it since I started keeping bees, so this is what we did for one of the hives. critiques welcome.

1. so my friend found a hive with EFB, we went in with nitrile gloves and took a sample and sent to beltsville.
2. treated all the hives in the yard with terramycin, every three days until the results came back, kept treating until yesterday cold and raining.
3. so we tried the alcohol, 2 pint bottles, the hive was 3 deep with an extra honey super from last year. blocked the entrance, taped one hole in the deep, sprayed the alcohol onto the inner cover and outer cover to kill the bees that were there, put some down the inner cover hole. lifted the inner cover a small amount spraying the alcohol at the bees trying to get out, then sprayed the first bottle down between the frames, closed the hive up for 10 min.
4. bees still alive, sprayed the second bottle. waited 15 min, bees still alive. got out the kerosene added that, waited 10 min.
5. removed the first honey super and bagged it, bees still alive below, more kerosene.
6. removed deep bagged it. kept repeating kerosene and bagging until down to the last deep. still some bees alive.
7 filled outer cover with some kerosene tried to bag the last deep with bb attached, bb separated but got the rest of the alive bees to drop into the outer cover and die.
8. removed gloves and regloved and put the bags into the back of my truck, some small holes noted by the diesel in the back of the truck. back of the truck now polluted with EFB potential.
9. brought them to my house, put on a new set of gloves, loaded them on a skid on my tractor, skid now polluted.
10. burned all the frames in 55 gal drum, no bees from that apiary flying due to sleet and freezing rain, wind changed direction had to move the tractor, steering wheel, shifter now polluted.
11. burned everything except the boxes, including the gloves and plastic bags, waiting for the EPA to show up.
12. boxes will be cut up and put in the trash for burning.
13. Plan on treating the remaining colonies for two more treatments, should be about one complete brood cycle. sprayed skid with alcohol, cleaned tractor parts with alcohol, ran out of alcohol, tried to sneak some vodka out of the house got caught, going to buy some more, put it on the skid in the back of the truck and then wash it out.

one thing to note about the alcohol, I was told by a nurse once it's the evaporation that kills the bacteria, it dries them out, so I let it dry and didn't wipe it off.

so far the two previous people that had efb, treated with terramycin, but ended up burning as it came back to the same hives, so I'm just burning.
edit: washed the bee suits added bleach


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## Fusion_power

Too many steps. Do this late evening or after dark when all the bees are in the hive.

1. dig hole at least 2 feet deep
2. seal colony
3. place colony in hole
4. apply flammable liquid
5. strike match
6. after it is fully burned, use the tractor to fill in the hole.
7. Wash all of your bee equipment such as smoker and hive tool with acetone. Launder bee suit with detergent.


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## WesternWilson

In my municipality you cannot burn. Period. So that is not an option here.

I euthanize the hives after sunset or just before dawn while the bees are all in cluster and not flying. Note NOT FLYING!!!* If you do this when the foragers are out they will just find homes in nearby hives and spread the pathogen.*

I quietly stuff the entrance with a rag. I carefully open the hive, holding the inner cover in my left hand. I take a large bottle of Walmart rubbing alcohol and dribble it all down the seams, working from one end of the colony over to the other, seam by seam. I reserve enough in the bottle such that I can hold the inner cover over the colony and dribble the rubbing alcohol over any workers on the inner cover. The cover is replaced and the upper entrance, if any, is stuffed with a rag, sealing the hive. Cover the hole in the inner cover if you have one. Replace the outer cover, let the hive sit for a few hours to be sure all bees are dead, but they are all dead pretty much right away anyhow.

That contains the sick hive and contains spread.

Disposing of the equipment: if your local municipality/fire department does regular burnings you can carefully bag the equipment in thick black plastic bags, 3 mil., as those bags do not perforate as easily as garbage bags. I scrub out the truck bed after transporting, away from the beeyard, with a pressure washer. If the bagged equipment has to be stored for a while ensure that the bags are not breached (by perforations or rats) and that bees cannot get into them to rob the infected stores.

You can also bury the equipment, or take it for sterilization if you have access to an irradiation facility. Don't try to save the honey or stores...not worth the risk and there is some concern they do not sterilize well via irradiation.

Note that all deadouts left open get robbed. If bees doing the robbing are infected, that can leave your deadout equipment infected too. So either seal deadouts until you can take them down, or take them away somewhere bee proof until you can deal with them. 

It can take a season or two to clear the apiary.....just because it is so darned hard to get all the infected equipment/stores out of reach of the bees. And of course, depending on what is around you, reinfection can be a risk.


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## wildbranch2007

Fusion_power said:


> Too many steps. Do this late evening or after dark when all the bees are in the hive.
> 
> 1. dig hole at least 2 feet deep


 as they say all beekeeping is local, digging the hole around here would take forever, and the owner of the land would shoot me, but I did think of it, thanks


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## squarepeg

randy oliver offers this advice with respect to afb, but some of it is applicable here:

"The scorching only needs to be enough to brown, not char the wood surface,
and get any wax or propolis to soak into the wood. What we use is a
paraffin hot tank at 300F (160C recommended by others), to sterilize the
boxes, bottom boards and covers, and dispose of the bees and combs as does
Paul above.

First kill the bees in the evening by plugging the entrance, lifting the
lid, and sprinkling in a half cup of lacquer thinner or ethyl acetate
(neither will contaminate the wood as would gasoline). This quickly kills
the bees. If burning the combs, be careful with gasoline, as it can cause
an explosion that can result in the combs flying all over the landscape.

Another alternative is to perform a "shake and bake" -- shake all the bees
into a new hive with combs of foundation (no drawn comb), and then burn all
the combs of the infected hive. Feed the new hive oxytet or tylosin in
syrup for the first two weeks after transfer. I've done this a number of
times with great success."

from: https://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind1902&L=BEE-L&P=R41257


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## WesternWilson

squarepeg said:


> randy oliver offers this advice with respect to afb, but some of it is applicable here:
> 
> "Another alternative is to perform a "shake and bake" -- shake all the bees
> into a new hive with combs of foundation (no drawn comb), and then burn all
> the combs of the infected hive. Feed the new hive oxytet or tylosin in
> syrup for the first two weeks after transfer. I've done this a number of
> times with great success."
> 
> from: https://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind1902&L=BEE-L&P=R41257


This is shook swarming plus medication.

Last year of 8 hives treated this way, 6 rebloomed with EFB. I suspect some of the EFB strains are becoming oxytet resistant. With the two that went on to be foulbrood free, they are set back so hard by a) the foulbrood and b) the shook swarming onto bare equipment, it is a race to get them robust enough to get through the approaching winter. Also note that the shook swarming often causes the bees to think their queen is defective (suddenly there is no brood in the colony, and until they build comb, nowhere to lay), so they often start queen cells. 

In short, by the time you medicate ($$ especially if you need a vet referral), supply the new equipment for the shook swarm (more $$), disinfect the equipment you do keep (I agree, at least ditch the combs) and then spend time and more resources getting the recovered colony up to speed again, you will likely find a quick euthanasia and buying a replacement colony is a better investment.

Again, use the test kits to be sure you actually have EFB or AFB. Good link on how to disinfect equipment post infection:
http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/downloadDocument.cfm?id=423


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## squarepeg

WesternWilson said:


> Last year of 8 hives treated this way, 6 rebloomed with EFB. I suspect some of the EFB strains are becoming oxytet resistant.


how long after shook swarming and treatment with oxytet did it take for the efb to rebloom?


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## WesternWilson

squarepeg said:


> how long after shook swarming and treatment with oxytet did it take for the efb to rebloom?


Within a week. It was really demoralizing. And so the other risk in remediation is....if the pathogen is resistant the entire time you have that colony under remediation it is a disease risk. So if you can, do all this in a remote hospital/quarantine yard outside the flight range of other apiaries. 

Also be aware that shook swarming is a big deal...bees in the air, pandemonium. So the risk here is that some of the disrupted infected bees drift into nearby hives. If there is nectar in the frames you will shower nectar all over too...how safe is that nectar? Not very.

One local mobile pollination operator told me that they medicate constantly to suppress the foulbroods as they cannot afford the time, labour and expense of dealing with sick bees. Unfortunately this drives resistance and then takes it on the road.


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## squarepeg

WesternWilson said:


> Within a week. It was really demoralizing.


crap. did you apply the oxytet in syrup or sprinkle powder? how much, how often, and how long?




WesternWilson said:


> One local mobile pollination operator told me that they medicate constantly to suppress the foulbroods...


that has been common practice around here for decades even with smaller stationary beekeepers. prophylactic antibiotics given when coming out of winter and then again after honey supers get removed. 

this practice is now forbidden in the u.s. although one wonders if a lot of antibiotics got stockpiled in advance of the directive; and if many have stopped prophylactic antibiotics, that more and more cases of efb and afb will be 'coming out of the woodwork' so to speak.

also wondering if packages coming from suppliers who previously medicated prophylactically have the potential to introduce pathogens into populations were they haven't been before.


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## wildbranch2007

squarepeg said:


> this practice is now forbidden in the u.s. although one wonders if a lot of antibiotics got stockpiled in advance of the directive; and if many have stopped prophylactic antibiotics, that more and more cases of efb and afb will be 'coming out of the woodwork' so to speak.


stockpiled, Tractor Supply couldn't keep it in stock, the lady said every store around here would sell out the day it came in. Well as I said the people that I know that have had it, never treated but there are so many beeks around it could come from any where. I would think a good place to find out that information would be to ask beltsville, they sent an email to my friend to say he had it, and also sent an email to the state of NY, so their records b/4 and after the ban should show an increase. Problem is most larger beeks just take care of it and never report it.


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## WesternWilson

I dosed immediately, apiary wide, with oxytet in icing sugar on the top bars to get a dose into them quickly. Then in syrup as per the package directions. Then turned the bees out onto bare equipment, then redosed in syrup. As soon as there was brood and no medication, 6 showed symptoms again and tested positive. 

I considered stockpiling oxytet but decided not to. When I considered my options, euthanasia was the least expensive response and had the added benefit of limiting spread into my other bees. Of course that is hard to stick to when you are looking at losing all your bees. My apiary is still not clear.


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## squarepeg

"efb sucks" 

a quote from beesource's beloved enjambres


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## Beebeard

Didn’t think I would end up lurking on my own thread, but glad for the discussion! 

I realize time is of the essence with this, but I haven’t been able to move as quick as I wanted on this. I’ve isolated this hive, and with a strong flow, I don’t think robbing will be a problem, nearest vet is a half hour drive, they want me to register with their practice, and they require an inspection from their staff. Then I’d still have to order the meds. All a bridge too far for a weak hive, I’m going to euthanize. 

Attaching a bunch of pictures of what I found tonight. Didn’t see any dried up scales in the cells, they were cleaned out and had fresh eggs in them. The infected larvae had their heads turned up, and blackened starting at the head and working its way down. What do you think?


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## Beebeard

I scraped open a few areas of capped brood. Some were alive, some were not.


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## Beebeard

I’m going to order some test kits tonight or tomorrow. 

Man, I don’t want to burn my equipment. I’ve got a scrap oven in the garage, what about cutting the combs out and baking the boxes and frames on a tray at about 275 for a while. If nothing else, after a few hours and some basting, it should pull nicely and go on a bun.


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## squarepeg

Beebeard said:


> I’m going to order some test kits tonight or tomorrow.


:thumbsup:

not many of my affected larvae made it to the stage that your black headed ones did. most died while still a small c shape looking like the one in the lower left corner of your #5 photo in post #67, and many of these turned yellow. my capped brood patterns looked about the same with less than half making it to capping stage.


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## Fusion_power

I've thought a few times that putting my bees in all new equipment over the last 3 years was a good idea. This thread emphasizes one of the reasons.


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## WesternWilson

Beebeard said:


> Attaching a bunch of pictures of what I found tonight. Didn’t see any dried up scales in the cells, they were cleaned out and had fresh eggs in them. The infected larvae had their heads turned up, and blackened starting at the head and working its way down. What do you think?


Those blackened larvae do not look like anything I have seen. In my usual EFB the larvae twist up, yellow and die, rotting down quickly into a a gelatinous greyish-yellow goo. If it is EFB then it appears to be a slightly different strain than I see.

Beebeard I would post to BEE-L and see if anyone can give you feedback on this. Bag up some samples of affected larvae and send them off to the lab? It will be interesting to see the results of your test kits.


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## Apis Natural

looks like sacbrood...



Beebeard said:


> I scraped open a few areas of capped brood. Some were alive, some were not.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

Has anyone done a mite wash on these colonies?


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## squarepeg

Tennessee's Bees LLC said:


> Has anyone done a mite wash on these colonies?


i have but it was after euthanizing so i'm not sure what that means. counts are in the 1 - 2% percent range.


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## WesternWilson

squarepeg said:


> could this be the video you are referring to lharder?
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U&feature=youtu.be
> 
> (highly recommended viewing to anyone wanting to get up to speed on efb, and my starting point for further inquiry into some of the ground covered in the video)


That presentation was wonderful. Thanks for posting that. 

I was more than a bit shocked at how frequently the foulbroods rebloom in apiaries, even after clearing infected colonies and equipment. I know a vaccine for AFB is in the research stage, hope one can be developed for EFB as well. They cannot arrive soon enough...


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## Cloverdale

Beebeard said:


> Didn’t think I would end up lurking on my own thread, but glad for the discussion!
> 
> I realize time is of the essence with this, but I haven’t been able to move as quick as I wanted on this. I’ve isolated this hive, and with a strong flow, I don’t think robbing will be a problem, nearest vet is a half hour drive, they want me to register with their practice, and they require an inspection from their staff. Then I’d still have to order the meds. All a bridge too far for a weak hive, I’m going to euthanize.
> 
> Attaching a bunch of pictures of what I found tonight. Didn’t see any dried up scales in the cells, they were cleaned out and had fresh eggs in them. The infected larvae had their heads turned up, and blackened starting at the head and working its way down. What do you think?


It looks like sacbrood:
•	Cells with punctured cappings scattered throughout sealed brood.
•	Larva will be upright, sac-like and stretched out in cell.
•	A tough leathery membrane makes larva easy to remove from cells.
•	Larvae turn from white, grey, yellow to brown and then black with the head end darker.
•	Infected larvae do not*adhere to cell walls.


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## WesternWilson

Tennessee's Bees LLC said:


> Has anyone done a mite wash on these colonies?


If you are suggesting that the larval deaths were from Varroasis, fair point...that is why confirming a foulbrood diagnosis must be done with the test kit. Then you know, not hope, that you are dealing with something easily remediable.


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## Beebeard

Test kit ordered. 

When I first noticed a problem, there was a bad smell coming from the hive. First inspection showed a lot of dead brood in various stages. Seemed like it was affecting the bigger “c” shaped larvae. I saw some that looked like the royal jelly was yellowish. The dead larvae were slumping down in the cells and some seemed gooey, but most retained their shape. Lots of them had that same black pointed head look. The smell is gone now and there doesn’t seem to be as many dead ones, but still plenty as the pictures show. 
It’s not good, whatever it is.


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## Apis Natural

did it smell sour or smell ammonia like(efb) or sulphur(afb)? Odour or smell is not a reliable diagnostic tool because some cases of AFB have no discernible smell at all.
have you tried the toothpick test to check for stickiness. ie rope length. 
hope you figure this out soon so you can take measures against the infection.

still, it looks like sacbrood to me.


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## Beebeard

Tried the stick test multiple times and it never came out ropy. The smell was closer to the acrid smell of a beetle slimed hive, but with a hint of rotten meat. It was a weird smell and I knew it couldn’t be good. I’ve had hives for 6 or 7 years and been through some ugly cutouts, this was something new to me. Looking online, it does look closer to sacbrood to me as well, but I will be testing regardless.
It’s a bummer, but at the same time I’m glad for the experience as it will help me be a better beekeeper in the future.


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## WesternWilson

I agree it looks like sacbrood, why not manage the hive for sacbrood while you order an EFB test kit? Shook swarm onto clean equipment and requeen.


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## enjambres

EFB does NOT rope. That's only a sign for AFB.

And in EFB any smell only occurs from the secondary bacteria growing on the dead larvae., which if your bees are still strong enough and attentive-enough will be remov Sadly, it is that good housekeeping trait which perpetuates the EFB as the nurse bees get contaminated cleaning out the dead, and even though they do not become sick from the contamination, they pass along contaminated brood food to a fresh crop of larvae, which keeps the cycle going.

EFB sucks!

Nancy


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## Cloverdale

WesternWilson said:


> I agree it looks like sacbrood, why not manage the hive for sacbrood while you order an EFB test kit? Shook swarm onto clean equipment and requeen.


Agree with that, too.

For sacbrood:

•	Requeen with a new queen; or preferred hygienic stock.
•	Replace heavily infected comb with fresh drawn comb or foundation.
•	Maintain strong, healthy colonies.


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## squarepeg

i am now about a week into terramycin treatment for acute onset highly contagious colony collapsing efb. this kind of efb definitely sucks.

in an earlier post i described starting one of two colonies removed to an isolation yard with the HCA-280 mixed 1/8 tsp into a quart until my order of terra-pro premixed powder from mann lake arrived.

a few days later and after receiving the premix i went back and gave the powder to the both colonies at the isolation yard. by then the one colony with the medicated syrup had consumed about half of the quart, and i could already see improvement in larval health with no sick larvae seen.

i went back today, five days after applying the premix powder to both hives, only to find that the premix powder had barely been touched by either of the two colonies, but the quart of terramycin syrup was almost gone.

not only had the first treated colony consume most of that quart, but it had constructed 3/4 of a deep frame of new comb on a foundationless frame they were shook swarmed onto and had solid healthy open brood in it. there was also some brood getting capped on an adjacent frame of clean empty drawn comb next to and the capping pattern was solid.

the colony having powder only for 5 days showed no improvement, not surprisingly since most of the powder was right where i left it.

i now have 7 colonies on or about to start antibiotic treatment for acute onset colony collapsing EFB. All will be receiving both powdered and liquid terramycin for 2 - 3 weeks and shook swarm onto foundationless frames.

We are about to enter a fairly prolonged dearth here so I will continue to keep some non-medicated syrup available until we see most of a 10 frame deep lang drawn out in new comb.

in the meantime i hope to have my drawn supers irradiated to that they can be given back to these colonies, hopefully to get some honey for winter on the fall blooms.


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## enjambres

The irradiation treatment dose for EFB is 15 KiloGrays, not the 10 KiloGrays used for AFB. I realize that sounds backwards as we fear AFB more than EFB, but that's what I found when researching this for myself.

I have been unsuccessful (so far) in organizing a gamma treatment for my gear, as the easiest one for me to participate in is only 10 KGrays. The higher dose makes for a more leaky (if there is honey in the combs) treatment, as well as being more expensive. As soon as I have a chance this summer, I am going to try the glacial acetic acid treatment on all of my spare equipment. Most of it has been out of contact with bees for more than 18 months (some as long as two years by now) so even if the acid doesn't work perfectly, time is now on my side.

I am surprised about the Terra-Pro powder results. When I dosed my colonies, I started with powdered oxytet and mixed it with powdered sugar myself. Instructions were to make up a batch and divide it among the colonies. Being a belts-and-suspenders type of gal, I worked out the per hive dosing and made up each hive's meds separately. The oxytet, by itself, gets weird and clumpy, in time during storage, even when tightly resealed. I wonder if your Terra-Pro has gotten ineffective.

I had to buy a drug-dealer's scale on Amazon to deal with the extremely small quantities of the Oxytet powder _per colony._ I measured by weight not by volume. I combined this with a weighed amount of powdered sugar. Sugar is just the carrier to be able to spread it around within the hive and to convince the nurse bees to eat it, I suspect. I sealed each dose up for transport to the yard in a tiny plastic food container. I only made up the mix on the day of the treatment.

Then each colony got its dose shaken on it, using a cinnamon-sugar shaker I bought at a fancy food store. (I tried several shakers before finding the one that was just right.)

Before I started treatment, I had gone in and marked all the brood frames, and lined them up in the center of each box. If there was an odd number, then I had more in the upper box than the lower one. 

Then when I shook the oxy/sugar mix down on each box I protected the brood frames in the center with a piece of clear plastic. Oxy (and maybe the sugar, too) is harmful to open larvae. (The clear plastic that I used was actually part of one of my styrofoam top feeders - the bent part that goes over the slot the bees come up into which keeps them from drowning.) At any rate, this allowed me to get the sugar on around the perimeter of the box (and the ends) without getting it on the brood itself. My bees readily gobbled up the sugar (or hauled it out - I'm sure some of both.) But enough must have found itself into the honey crops of the nurse bees so that they stopped propagating the problem while feeding new larvae. With fewer sickened larvae to be hauled out, the bacterial load eased and finally a healthy brood cycle got reestablished in most, but not all, of my colonies. Some got too far gone while I dithered. I got my oxy directly from a veterinary source.

I have some pictures of me doing the shake showing how I did it, if there is any interest in seeing them. I think I have posted them before, but they are not on this laptop.

I have also used (in another situation) a grease patty with oxy and sugar mixed in it for a colony that had no stores and very few bees.

EFB sucks!

Nancy


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## Fusion_power

There is a lot of published info showing that oxytetracycline should not be mixed into syrup "because it breaks down". Jim Tew published an article debunking this several years ago. OxyT works when delivered in a syrup, but it can be stored by the bees and could be removed by the beekeeper as "honey". To avoid this, oxyT should be mixed with powdered sugar and applied to the ends of the top bars above the brood nest.


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## squarepeg

very good info dar. my efb infected colonies are dwindled down to less than a single deep's worth of bees and all of the supers have been removed. i am forcing them to draw new comb and don't believe there will be much storage until long after the antibiotic syrup has been discontinued.


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## WesternWilson

A few points:

1. in Britain, where practice is IMHO of a higher standard than here (and helped by a really well informed and hands on British Beekeeping Association, great info on their resource pages and the BBKA Beginning Beekeeping handbook is the gold standard in bee books), they begin oxytetracycline (OTC) treatment with a *dribble*. The OTC is applied along each seam of bees. I like this method as it ensures the OTC is ingested promptly by everyone in the colony (this is done instead of the OTC in icing sugar on the top bars).

2. While OTC does break down rapidly in syrup, and most rapidly if exposed to sunlight (so feeder should be protected from sunlight), you can just feed freshly prepared amounts daily to keep a fresh stream of OTC flowing through the house bees. So instead of giving the recommended dose in one feed, split it into thirds and feed over three days, mixing the day's ration fresh each time.

3. While oxytetracycline does get into the stores and honey, it degrades steadily over time. I have an inquiry into the BBKA on their recommendation that all honey from treated colonies must be stored for 6 months before being sold/used for human consumption. I believe the 6 months is the time it takes for the OTC to degrade pretty completely, but they do not state that explicitly so I want a confirmation. But that would put to rest any concerns about OTC lingering in the stores/honey over time.

4. I am always amazed at how quickly the brood clears with the OTC. The catch is: once you stop the medication, there must not be EFB contaminated comb, stores or equipment available to the bees or they will reinfect. So the old stacks you shook swarmed them from must be sterilized before re-use, which brings us to....

5. I am pretty sure the irradiation advice is not to put bee bread and honey through the process as AFB spores tucked in the honey are not always sterilized/killed. So when you are sorting your infected equipment, any frames with honey/bee bread (all stores) have to go (preferably onto a burn pile). 

6. If you are having to disinfect your equipment yourself, read through the excellent and very throrough BBKA guide.

7. Glacial acetic acid fumigation is effective for Nosema, wax moth and chalkbrood only. There is no evidence it is effective for the foulbroods, alas.


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## WesternWilson

Fusion_power said:


> As for selecting for EFB resistance, that would be fairly easy to do empirically. Set up disease challenge experiments. One way it could be done non-destructively would be to capture a test population from each colony and challenge them with EFB to see which are least affected. Then breed from the colonies that have the best test results.


I was going back over this interesting thread and want to comment on the above quote. 

There is a lot of "breed from the best colonies" chatter in the bee world. I don't mean to sound disparaging but I am very frustrated with this very simplistic statement, which is made without taking into account the clever honey bee reproductive strategy. Not just clever: blindingly brilliant.

For most of us mammals, Mendelian genetics, where 1 mom and 1 dad contribute equal gene shares to each offspring, are in play. This is a very quick, predictable mode of genetic refinement = evolution. It also makes it really easy to stop certain "issues" as you have such a simple mode of gene transmission. It's either ma or pa.

In honey bees, things get much more complex. We have one mum, up to 20+ dads, and the dads are from distant colonies. Worse, all the sons of a queen are products of her genetics only...so if mum is not in possession of a required gene packet, NONE of her boys will be either. Ack.

So if we have at our disposal two colonies that display a given strength (low Varroa loads, or avoided foulbrood in an apiary where foulbrood was a problem, etc.)....in the absence of artificial insemination, our new queens fly far, far away to find multiple drone fathers. And even when you use AI, your chance of daddy contributing the required gene packet is only 50%.

So for wild matings, it is going to be really hard to fix any given trait or perceived trait. The drone daddies just mix it up wayyyy too much. And remember, if you limit genetic diversity in the queen's matings ie. limit the number/genetic diversity of her mates, then you will reduce the ability of the colony to depend on genetic diversity amongst the worker bees to blunt the impact of any given stressor. Genetic diversity in the colony drives disease/pest/stressor resistance.

For those reasons, breeding from what appear to be promising/superior colonies is a slow, multigenerational process at best and a hit or miss process at worst.

In the case of breeding for bees that exhibit desirable qualities (great spring buildup, high lay rates), you can take some years to try to gradually fix an improved line. 

In the case of breeding for critical traits (foulbrood resistance in the face of constant infected drift bees/robbing infected colonies...or Varroa proof-ness) you have to get it right first time out or the queen in question and her colony gets sick/infested and fails. End of experiment.

In short, for any condition of critical importance, we are asking a lot and probably too much of the bee genome to shift radically and permanently in the desired direction. Bees do not follow the simple Mendelian genetic pattern! Don't ask them to: eons of time have allowed them to choose a different strategy. It is not their fault, or their genome's fault, that they are geared to eons of time, not months of time, to react to environmental pressures. 

The extinctions, all too common, of organisms who do fit the more malleable and predictable Mendelian patterns, should warn us not to ask too much, too quickly, of honey bees.


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## Fusion_power

Valid points, but nonetheless, I believe my statement is still correct. Intense selection pressure produces rapid change in any organism including honeybees. The Achilles heel of this statement is that intense selection pressure also dramatically reduces genetic diversity.

I would never expect such a breeding program to be set up by an amateur beekeeper. It would take several years to achieve useful results and then only in the hands of a dedicated and knowledgeable beekeeper with a lot of resources.

Some work has already been done on EFB resistance so it is not like starting from scratch. One of the resistance mechanisms found was that EFB resistant bees produce more bactericidal brood food. Another mechanism speculated but not proven is that resistant colonies are less likely to accept drifting bees from neighboring colonies.

Any change in genetics, particularly when that change modifies the behavior of bees, has a metabolic price to be paid. This would be a significant consideration with honeybees bred for EFB resistance just as breeding for hygienic behavior extracts a price. What would be the metabolic price of selecting for EFB resistance?


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## squarepeg

it's a few years old, but here's a good review paper:

https://www.bijenhouders.nl/files/Bijengezondheid/graaf/4.-evb-art-forsgren-2010.pdf


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## lharder

The advantage nature has is that selection is universal across the whole population. So it is frustrating that one beekeeper can select but the neighbors do not. This is why kept bees are in such poor health. 

As the arnot bees have shown, the multiple mating thing has the great benefit of keeping genetic diversity in spite of a strong selection pressure. None the less, the bees adapted to mites. I see no reason for it to be different for any other brood disease. When Britian had a 0 tolerance for efb, essentially applying a strong selection pressure across the population, the incidence of efb was at its lowest level. Start applying treatments, and the incidence is higher and it becomes a problem. A major problem in beekeeping is the lack of universal selection along with the continual introduction of new challenges to our populations.


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## WesternWilson

I think we have to be very careful in an examination of that issue Leroy. Ye olde "correllation vs causation" issue. In the Arnot, Seeley has changed his message. At first it was widely thought the mites had changed not the bees. And since the mite genome shifts much more quickly in response to pressure, it will shift again in response to whatever changes we foster in the bees. I think that is a dead end no matter how well we engineer the bees. We need to address the mite genome instead.

Britain's willingness to promote quarantine and euthanasia is not likely doing any selecting to the bee genome as many foulbrood affected colonies are treated. What their policy does accomplish is shrinking the available pool of foulbrood to be passed along. They also experience far less mixing of bees in giant pollination jamborees like the California almond orchards, where so many bees meet, exchange pests and diseases, and then return to all corners of the continent. Ack.

However this exchange is veering into tough and divisive territory. We were focused on what to do about EFB/AFB in our own apiaries. Medication and shook swarms, and isolation from other bees remain our best options. But I sure hope research on foulbrood vaccines proceeds rapidly...


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## AHudd

WesternWilson said:


> We need to address the mite genome instead.


Yesss!!

Alex


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## lharder

In systems theory selection is a central principle. We have seen it over and over again in all sorts of systems. A new problem, followed by a genetic shift. Most beekeepers still think they are not part of the natural world and these things don't apply to them and find all sorts of excuses not to take it into consideration. An argument with Darwin is not easily won. 

I think the Arnot bees show an interesting baseline. The relative lack of brood disease as also associated with mite resistance. The myth that only one thing can be done at a time. Nature doesn't care and will obliterate colonies not up to snuff. Isolation of contaminants is not possible in this situation, though density of colonies is lower. I'm sure if you weaken a colony in that situation it will get robbed out and any contamination spread. Look how fast mites spread when first introduced to this system. Its not that I think that disease and mortality events don't occur in these systems, but rather regulation through natural selection rapidly brings the system back to equilibrium. 

On the comment that mites, or viruses, or bacteria change faster than hosts, therefore the host has no chance. This is only a surface analysis We are all doomed if this is the case. Rather there are structural aspects to our organization (and pathogens as well) that allows us to persist in the face of pathogens that can change much faster than we can. But we don't see this doomed race as a general feature of systems. Something else we don't understand very well is afoot. Complexity theory offers some interesting but not really tested ideas about this. 

It used to be thought that feral colonies were disease reservoirs and they were to be gotten rid of. I think the shoe is on the other foot now. We are the cause of most of our problems and we put disease pressure on feral systems. 

But now we have the tools to actually show genetic shifts with selection events. DNA analysis on bees before, during and after disease outbreaks will probably show that these shifts occur. So long as we use selection as a big part of our arsenal.


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## crofter

Link to very detailed description and pictures on EFB identification at various stages and secondary infections. A very comprehensive pair of articles.

https://www.vita-europe.com/beehealth/diseases/european-foulbrood-efb/
https://beeinformed.org/2013/04/05/european-foulbrood-efb-identification/


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## squarepeg

many thanks for the links frank. excellent thread here. 

quite a few good comments made over the last week or two that i want to respond to as well as update on the status of my efb epidemic here.

hopefully get some time to do that over the holiday weekend.


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## squarepeg

squarepeg said:


> a copy of the email i sent to beltsville this am...


(see post #50)

the answers received from beltsville today:

"1. I see that in the U.K. MLST is being performed on isolates from the VITA test kits to determine the sequence type and to some degree suggesting a course of action for remediation. Is anything like being done here in the U.S.? 

_With Dr.Kirk Anderson (copied) we hope there will be an assessment of virulent strains of EFB in he future, to date the recommendations for antibiotic use are consistent regardless of the identified strain and we might assume that symptomatic larvae are the defining trait of virulence, as with strains of the AFB agent._

2. Does Beltsville test positive EFB samples sent to it for resistance and sensitivity to Terramycin? 

3. I was surprised to learn that melissococcus plutonius can survive in honey and on comb for quite a long time and exposure to it can result in new infections. Are you able to confirm that this is happening based on your experience with the samples sent in for processing at the Bee Research Lab?

_I would say yes to weeks, not years, but this is really for the bulk of bacteria. Naturally, there must be some living or non-living site that maintains M.plutonius when brood are absent (seasonally or in deadouts) but I do not know of any firm tests of viability for more than a few weeks in hive substrates/honey. That will be useful information._

4. After euthanizing the colonies I brought in the equipment to include quite a few honey supers of drawn comb most of which had not been filled with new honey yet. I have washed this comb with mild pressure from the garden hose, use an air compressor to dry it, and then applied a spray of 3% bleach. Is it possible to have this comb sampled to see if it still holds melissococcus plutonius?

_yes we can culture from this comb if you send it_

5. I am currently speaking with a gentleman who has an adjunct position at Alabama A & M University in Huntsville. He is involved with their irradiation lab. I am interested in having all of the equipment irradiated, but it doesn’t look like that facility is going to work for this application. Are you aware of any industrial irradiation facilities (other than Sterigenics in New Jersey) that offer sterilization of bee equipment?

_We have used Sterix (maybe same as in NJ but we used North Carolina) and they are good, but pricey...likely more than hive bodies/frames are worth, unfortunately. Your bleach method can likely have the same efficacy in my opinion_

and in another response from beltsville:

_Thanks **** and all, yes EFB is definitely resurgent. As for sterilizing equipment, would Dr. **** consider an ethylene oxide chamber? This was used as a norm for treating foulbrood suspect frames in Maryland but is no longer in use. We did a commercial trial with ETO vs. gamma irradiation and fond the former was better at sterilizing. There are permitting issues as it is a biohazard but overall the regulatory and cost hurdles seem less than irradiation.
I just sent a note on your other questions, re the virulence of EFB strains, you might loop in our colleague Dr. Kirk Anderson with USDA-Tucson ([email protected]), who is keen on typing strain types with virulence in the hive._


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## enjambres

@Squarepeg:

Thanks for posting some of your correspondence with Beltsville.

It is my understanding that Sterigenics -the place in NJ used by the Montgomery County (PA) Beekeepers Assoc. - has a facility in FL which does a fair amount of bee equipment irradiation. Certainly much closer to you, than NJ.

The idea that it is expensive rests on the fact that they require a minimum of 7 pallets (priced per pallet at less than $200) to do a run of bee equipment. A pallet can hold up to 1500 lbs and in volume is about the same as 42 deep boxes (including frames within. No metal (except for nails/staples). So telescoping covers and metal Qu Ex are a problem. (Metal blocks the gamma rays.) Part of the cost of a run is that the materials to be treated must be "mapped", i.e. their density must be determined ahead of time so that an effective, penetrating, dose can be calibrated. Pallets of assorted stacked up bee stuff may have an uneven density (empty boxes vs boxes with frames of drawn comb, perhaps with some honey vs empty boxes with bases and inner covers sleeved inside, etc.) There is a charge for this mapping at facilities that don't already have this info from prior runs. The other issue is the need for the bee equipment to be "packaged" in such a way that honey doesn't leak out all over the facility. The instructions for how the PA beekeepers prepare their pallets are on their website. If honey leaks, I believe there may be an additional cleaning charge - as you might imagine. 

And of course, from a bee "public health" point of view, you must secure (cover/seal up) the stacks in such a way so that they arrive and may be held for the scheduled run, in order that local bees cannot be drawn to the equipment, and thus spread the infection to them.

So you have the minimum # of pallets and the mapping costs. Beyond that the cost is dose dependent with EFB being more expensive than AFB (Go, figure!) based on Australian research that requires 15 KiloGrays rather than the 10 KiloGrays that effectively kill of AmericanFB, Nosema, etc. 

ETO is another possibility but I understand there are some toxicity problems with it. Sterigenics does that, too, in a facility near me, but they were very discouraging about its use for bee equipment.

I plan to try acetic acid exposure this summer, but it is interesting that your lab feels that simple time may also be effective. My contaminated gear has been out of service for nearly 1.5 to 2 years now. That's another alternative. About half of it had the frames scraped and wax burned (in winter.) I considered washing but decided it might spread the contamination into the soil, and of course, up here washing can only happen at the time of year when the bees are flying.

The main cost for me to go to NJ was the transportation as I don't have a truck and would have to rent a UHaul, twice for both delivery and pick-up. That cost was about $1500, compared to the treatment costs for two or three pallets (less than $600). The actual irradiation costs work out to less than $5/ deep with frames, which is a bargain compared to replacement cost. Transportation adds another $12-15/ deep, which approaches the box cost, but still cheaper than replacing the frames and foundation, or the value in salvageable drawn combs. 

I am still glad that I treated, despite all the hand-wringing about prolonging "weak genetics". I wish I had done so with more alacrity once the problem was identified. But even treating (and two changes to clean equipment) did not, in the first 18 months return all of my colonies to their full pre-sickness vigor. I lost some. But this year (the third season) things are looking much better. I have one last colony to check tomorrow, but I am hopeful. (Memorial Day up here being the beginning of our strongest flow. We don't have a summer dearth here, so it will be OK from now until the end of September.) I have been on tenterhooks as we had a long, delayed, cool spring this year, which is one risk factor (due to uneven pollen availability). I am still aggressively cashiering drawn combs and will continue that this summer. I also select against older-looking pollen. 

EFB sucks!

Nancy


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## squarepeg

that's good info nancy. many thanks.

a lot of meat and potatoes in this thread, and not much garnish. to be honest i could use a little garnish right about now. 

an excerpt from an email i wrote to a collaborating scientist:

'It’s early, but after a couple of weeks or so with oxytet I’m seeing healthier larvae and a higher percentage of brood getting capped.

The outbreak occurred at the peak of the population curve and short worker longevity. In just a few weeks time the colonies dwindled from 2 - 3 ten frame Langs worth of bees to barely a few deep frames of bees becaue the brood disease stopped the next generation of workers from coming on line. They are even smaller now, almost not worth saving, but it’s a learning process for me.

I figure I’ve lost about 1500 lbs. of potential honey crop, 20 nucs promised for sale this year, and now have a dozen deeps and a couple of dozen supers of drawn comb I’m trying to salvage.

I’m cherry picking the boxes/frames I am washing and bleaching to the ones that I can get the honey and beebread out of.

I can imagine how the anaerobes just might survive for a very long time at the bottom of a cell containing wet beebread, or at the bottom of a honey cell.

I’ll send samples to Beltsville with that in mind and let them see how many months the bacteria survives there."


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## enjambres

Okey-doke, SP, here's some tasty garnish for ya: your mite numbers will crash and stay down (lower than usual, even for you.) Nearly no maturing brood for an extended period really hammers the mites' summer reproduction curve. You know I am relentless about monitoring mites, using both boards and sugar rolls. My sugar rolls were so low, for so long, I started to doubt my technique, so I alcohol washed the samples to see if I was missing them. Nope, as usual my sugar rolls were doing as well as alcohol washes. There just weren't mites to get found. Reprieve last surprisingly long, well into the second spring. A small, but definitely appreciated, blessing. SHB and wax moths weren't so kind, so keep an eye on them. If they get too small, put 'em in nuc boxes. Then you can clean up all you regular-sized gear in one big effort.

Also, the whole experience taught me a lot about bees, beekeeping and myself, as a beekeeper. I was sort of going along with The Received Wisdom of Beekeeping, but the crisis taught me to be less-afraid of what other people might think about my beekeeping style/goals. And the bees and I weathered a terrible period together. My beekeeping skills and inventiveness were pushed to the max, but in a sort of good way.

Though I have to admit when I lost the last one of one of my queenlines, I was in a terrible funk for quite awhile. Still, I caught a swarm this spring and have named it for the lost line, so I feel a bit better now. 

EFB sucks! (But it, too, shall pass. I promise you.)

Nancy


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## Fusion_power

SP's example shows that bees with some level of mite resistance are susceptible to EFB. Rothenbuhler's AFB resistant bees in the 1930's and 1940's showed similar susceptibility to EFB. I wonder if SP's bees would show high levels of AFB resistance? This seems like a reasonable logic step since hygienic behavior has been linked to both AFB resistance and varroa resistance. It gets down to needing a selection program to see if we could combine AFB resistance with varroa resistance and then add EFB resistance.


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## squarepeg

dar, i'm thinking our bees are generally resistant across the board but not bullet proof. 

all the breeding in the world wouldn't get as much done as having some degree of oversight in place at the local level with respect to new beekeepers.

that 1.25 miles from my bees a well meaning person imported 12 colonies over a three year period only to not pay due diligence to prevent their collaspe and subsequent rob out by other colonies in the neighborhood ought to be against the law. in fact i think it is.

shame on me i guess for not being proactive in this regard. i may try to contribute to the discussion with the locals about it but i'm not very optimistic what i have to say would be well received.

bottom line: if you are going to husband bees at a very minimum you have to know how to tell if your colony is doing alright or in a death spiral, and at the very least close your entrances if you have robbing going on and take whatever action is indicated to prevent the spread of diseases and pests.

after the first year of 4 out of 4 dead outs it was irresponsible of whoever is making a profit on those packages to sell another 4 without suggesting the importance of understanding why all 4 died. three years in a row, no good.


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## squarepeg

nancy, many thanks for the garnish. it was just what the doctor ordered. 

losing queenlines is what i'm sick about.

100% loss of those would more than i can stomach.

i'd rather go back to hangliding.


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## msl

Nancy, have you considered the sugar shake jar/sugar as a posable vector for EFB?


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## enjambres

I have, and each colony has their own marked jar, not used for any other colony. I also wash each of the jars in between tests, not as a an anti-EFB precaution, just because I like to start each test with a dry, clean jar. I keep them stored in the correct order of rotation, so i know which colony needs to rolled each week.

The spring I discovered EFB, it appeared before I had started my monthly rounds of sugar rolling. After it appeared, I became obsessive about cross-contamination, even wearing a stockinette tubes over my lower sleeves, and a disposable plastic food service apron on top of my hive jacket when working on a sick colony. (Hot as hell, but good for my peace of mind. Gave me a taste of what it must be like to nurse in Ebola wards in Africa!)

It's a very good thought to think about sugar roll jars as potential vectors - after all we deliberately choose nurse bees as the test subjects for both rolls and alcohol washes. The main difference is that sugar rolled bees are exposed to the jar and then returned to the colony, where as washed bees don't go back.

Nancy


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## Jadeguppy

squarepeg said:


> dar, i'm thinking our bees are generally resistant across the board but not bullet proof.
> 
> all the breeding in the world wouldn't get as much done as having some degree of oversight in place at the local level with respect to new beekeepers.
> 
> that 1.25 miles from my bees a well meaning person imported 12 colonies over a three year period only to not pay due diligence to prevent their collaspe and subsequent rob out by other colonies in the neighborhood ought to be against the law. in fact i think it is.
> 
> shame on me i guess for not being proactive in this regard. i may try to contribute to the discussion with the locals about it but i'm not very optimistic what i have to say would be well received.
> 
> bottom line: if you are going to husband bees at a very minimum you have to know how to tell if your colony is doing alright or in a death spiral, and at the very least close your entrances if you have robbing going on and take whatever action is indicated to prevent the spread of diseases and pests.
> 
> after the first year of 4 out of 4 dead outs it was irresponsible of whoever is making a profit on those packages to sell another 4 without suggesting the importance of understanding why all 4 died. three years in a row, no good.



Well said. You have suffered a financial loss due to another's carelessness. This has me very concerned due to the density of beeks here and my growing understanding of how many are bee "havers" as some of the locals call them.


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## Jadeguppy

enjambres said:


> I have, and each colony has their own marked jar, not used for any other colony. I also wash each of the jars in between tests, not as a an anti-EFB precaution, just because I like to start each test with a dry, clean jar. I keep them stored in the correct order of rotation, so i know which colony needs to rolled each week.
> 
> The spring I discovered EFB, it appeared before I had started my monthly rounds of sugar rolling. After it appeared, I became obsessive about cross-contamination, even wearing a stockinette tubes over my lower sleeves, and a disposable plastic food service apron on top of my hive jacket when working on a sick colony. (Hot as hell, but good for my peace of mind. Gave me a taste of what it must be like to nurse in Ebola wards in Africa!)
> 
> It's a very good thought to think about sugar roll jars as potential vectors - after all we deliberately choose nurse bees as the test subjects for both rolls and alcohol washes. The main difference is that sugar rolled bees are exposed to the jar and then returned to the colony, where as washed bees don't go back.
> 
> Nancy


Nancy, is it possible that EFB was spread on the rag when washing the jars?


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## squarepeg

Jadeguppy said:


> You have suffered a financial loss due to another's carelessness.


i am trying to be careful about what i say here. the truth is that i don't know and have no way of finding out for sure just where the source of the efb was.

i've owned up to my shortcomings in terms of not recognizing the malady right away and the precious time i lost figuring it out.

i've also owned up to the management risks i accepted by lining up my hives close together and doing a lot of resource swapping between hives.

that said, we haven't heard of efb outbreaks around here for decades. the beginner having 12 deadouts of imported bees over 3 years time 1.25 miles from my bees is high on the list of suspects, but i can't know for sure that's where it came from.


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## Jadeguppy

squarepeg said:


> i am trying to be careful about what i say here. the truth is that i don't know and have no way of finding out for sure just where the source of the efb was.
> 
> i've owned up to my shortcomings in terms of not recognizing the malady right away and the precious time i lost figuring it out.
> 
> i've also owned up to the management risks i accepted by lining up my hives close together and doing a lot of resource swapping between hives.
> 
> that said, we haven't heard of efb outbreaks around here for decades. the beginner having 12 deadouts of imported bees over 3 years time 1.25 miles from my bees is high on the list of suspects, but i can't know for sure that's where it came from.


Your experience sends chills down my spine. I haven't heard stories of EFB locally, but I-10 is a major route for commercial hives and that concerns me that something may get introduced into the county. Next month's meeting we have the inspector coming and I'm looking forward to getting to question him. I need to start a list of questions.


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## crofter

I was at an information meeting not long ago to find out about procedures for beekeepers to get prescriptions and antibiotic products. I was amazed at the large percentage of beekeepers who have presently been doing routine prophylactic antibiotic applications spring and fall. That could well be camouflaging a reservoir of both AFB and EFB.

I expect quite a number will be unwilling to either register or pay vet fees to continue. In fact the very thrust of the vet prescribed only antibiotics is to eliminate such ritual treatments. 

I hope we are not just starting to see the tip of the EFB iceberg.


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## squarepeg

not trying to be alarmist, but i have been told by officials at both the state and the national levels that reports of efb are on the increase.

the bacteria has morphed and is continuing to morph into dozens of strains (genotypes) some of which are many orders of magnitude better at bring a colony to complete collapse. fortunately the test kit is sensitive to any of the strains, unfortunately the test kit can not determine the strain.

since the bacteria affects young larvae the collapse in population happens most quickly during times of population build up. when brooding and foraging to support that brooding are in very high gear the workers don't live much more than a month. 

when the adult population starts decreasing by attrition of those hard working short-lived workers there is no next round of workers to replace them. the more virulent the bacteria is as measured perhaps by the % of brood not dying as a small larvae (and making it to capping and ermergence), the faster population decreases to a ghost of what it was. 

i've witnessed colonies getting down to a handful or two of bees with the queen still laying up a storm. obviously this colony is not going to be able to defend against robbers when the flow trickles to a drip and the dearth causes unemployed foragers to go looking....

i got caught with my pants down. don't let it happen to you.

1. add funny looking larvae to you mental list of things you pay attention to when you are examining brood frames. if your capped brood pattern is spotty you have to look very carefully at each and every cell containing young larvae. if you have hygienic bees like i do you will be lucky to find one or two on a whole frame because they fly them out of the hive not long after the larvae die.

2. in my opinion and based on anecdotal reporting those colonies at highest risk are nucs and packages that are made up in the far south in very early spring, basically shaking the bees that are coming off pollination in california into splits with new queens. 

3. if you have contingent of new beekeepers in your area and they are relying on nucs or packages commercially produced in this way for their first bees, double up on your follow up with those beginners. make sure a 'sponsor' or 'mentor' sees to it that the colonies don't become a hazard to other nearby colonies.

4. go ahead and order a test kit or three. time is of the essence with this and if you want confirmation to help form your decision making you can't afford to wait for the kit to arrive in the mail.

5. be thinking ahead of time on what you would do should you find active efb in your bees.


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## lharder

It would be good to source where the efb came from. Just another reason to promote local stock. Again, the biggest risk to bees is commercial beekeeping, the masking of problems, and the movement of bees. 

I am watching like a hawk every time I go into the hive. I will euthanize a colony with obvious symptoms, wrap the equipment up, and burn in winter. With my homemade equipment, it is not so expensive. I am getting reports of Nosema in this area, probably from a magnitude point of view a bigger problem. The use of antibiotics will make bees more susceptible to Nosema as the gut bacteria aid in resistance. So when dealing with two things at once...


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## Beebeard

In my case, this hive had been established in the attic of a house for several years, judging by the black comb. They were thriving in the fall when I first looked at it. I did the removal just as the maples were blooming. I didn't keep any of the original comb, basically made a package with them and shook them into a medium with drawn frames. I did crush and feed their own honey back to them. They built up ok, and I added a second medium, but then they started to go down hill. I ordered the test kit, and of course they are back ordered with no expected ship date. In the mean time, I still have the hive isolated and a robbing screen in place. I'm leaning towards it just being sacbrood at this point. Hopefully the kits will get here soon. I'll have some fresh queens soon and will re-queen as soon as I can.
All my bees are 'local', only from swarms, cutouts and splits. Where those swarms came from, I can't always say. I have had a few with marked queens. There aren't really any commercial keepers around here, a couple of serious sideliners. But there is a thriving hobby scene with plenty of nucs and packages coming in. 
I had a moment of weakness in late winter where I almost bought some commercial queens to see how they compare to my own. I didn't end up buying any and decided to stick with mine. My hives were looking weak coming out of winter. I shouldn't have doubted the local stock or my husbandry efforts: they built up great and I'm looking at one of my best crops.


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## enjambres

@JadeGuppy,

Anything is possible, but I don't use a dishcloth when washing the jars. Just very hot water, detergent, and my bare hands, with copious rinsing afterward (to remove any detergent residue, because I have naturally very soft water.) I let them air dry on my kitchen drying rack. I am basically just getting rid of the sugar residues, more than anything. The lids are just rinsed out in the yard and stored with each colony's own bucket of tools and miscellaneous small equipment.

Nancy


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## squarepeg

an excerpt from an email i sent today to collaborating scientists:

"Update:

It appears that most of the EFB infected colonies are showing a positive response to Terramycin gauging by the decrease in number of larvae affected and improvement in the percentage of brood making it to capping stage.

At least one colony is exhibiting what appears to be EFB that is resistant to Terramycin. This colony is continuing to dwindle as not enough brood is surviving to make up for the attrition of the adult population. After 2 weeks of Terramycin being available powder form (Mann Lake’s Terra-Pro) and syrup form (HCA-280 mixed 1/8 teaspoon per quart), the population has decreased from about 2 Langstroth deep frames of bees to about a half frame of bees, with infected larvae still plainly visible.

My plan is to euthanize this colony next weekend, and I would like to send the frames in for analysis. Ideally it would be nice to identify the DNA sequence type of this m. plutonius, as well as to look at sensitivity and resistance to Terramycin in the lab.

My questions are should I send these frames up to Beltsville or over to Tucson, and what would be the best way to package and ship these frames?"


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## wildbranch2007

One of my honey customers gave me a call a couple of weeks ago, had a swarm in his tree, located about 1 mile from my yard. went and caught it and gave it to a friend that lost most of his bees over the winter. middle of last week he gives me a call, says the nucs and hives we requeened are looking good, but that swarm, the brood doesn't look right. Yup EFB, so now I have a hive a mile from my biggest yard that will eventually die and my bees will rob it out. bummer, that's the 3rd efb case this year that I have seen. only ever saw one in the last 40+ years, sure hope the trend goes away.


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## enjambres

@SP:

It seems odd that one colony out of the same yards would have a different genetic strain of EFB. More likely, at least to me, is that that colony has an additional stressor. It would be interesting to type both the ones with the common response and the outlier.

I, too, had hat looked like a very brisk and positive response to Oxytet. (Clearly noticeable difference in expressed signs between the first and second dose, which was only four days apart.) But in the long term (through the succeeding 12-15 months), some essential vitality had been taken out of some of the recovered colonies. That produced some losses. This is the first season since the outbreak in 2017, that my bees have all seemed vigorous again. 

I am very glad to hear yours seem to be improving with treatment.

EFB sucks (but it - still - responds to Oxytet treatment)

Nancy


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## squarepeg

enjambres said:


> More likely, at least to me, is that that colony has an additional stressor. It would be interesting to type both the ones with the common response and the outlier.


it's very possible nancy that this colony like some of the others that have already been euthanized has gotten below critical mass and isn't able to function with the combination of stressors.

to compensate for the lack of a viable field force i made up some 'wet' protein sub/sugar/water feed to the consistency of thin peanut butter and gave that to them yesterday. 

my caught swarm is approaching 2 weeks since moving in to the swarm trap with no signs of efb. the swarm ended up covering the better part of 10 deep frames and in less than two weeks has them almost completely full of brood and stores. the capped brood is completely solid and the open brood is 100% pearly white.

i added a second deep yesterday with 10 frames of empty comb. 15 of the 20 frames in that hive are frames from efb deadouts that i have sanitized to the best of my ability. some goes for the hive bodies, inner cover, telescoping cover, and entrance reducer.

if i see no efb once this colony fills the second deep with bees, my plan is to make as many nucs from it as i can. i'll do this by introducing a foundationless frame to the middle of the broodnest and then split the queen out a week later. a week after that i'll make as many nucs as i can with the emergency cells.


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## jim lyon

My guess is the hive still showing symptoms simply dwindled to the point where it didn't have the "firepower" to feed the new larvae and to clean out the dead and dying larvae. I've had success switching places with a stronger hive and caging the old queen for a few days if there is too radical a difference in hive populations.


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## squarepeg

jim lyon said:


> My guess is the hive still showing symptoms simply dwindled to the point where it didn't have the "firepower" to feed the new larvae and to clean out the dead and dying larvae.


that is my guess as well jim, many thanks for chiming in. 

this morning i came up on another hive this morning with 5+ deep frames worth of bees that is 8 days into treatment but still showing a few discolored larvae. 

two others that are 17 days into treatment and have more like 7 - 8 frames of bees were found to have solid brood patterns and no discolored larvae.

when efb is found in a large holding yard are treatments applied just to the affected hives or are they applied yard-wide?


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## jim lyon

squarepeg said:


> when efb is found in a large holding yard are treatments applied just to the affected hives or are they applied yard-wide?


Hmmm. Well, you asked the question. 
A few seasons ago I had this very thing happen to an entire load of about 400 double hives that came back from the almonds in dire straits from some sort of spray stress. They were booming hives just a month earlier and now were severely stressed and showing all the classic signs of EFB. I gave them all 4 weekly treatments (decided to add one for good measure lol) with a powdered sugar-TM mixture and they almost all recovered fully. The few that died we opted to stack up on the strong hives. We monitored the hives through the summer and most were good strong colonies going into the winter. I haven't had anything save an occasional rare hive that has exhibited symptoms since. I'm struggling to remember what we did for mite control if anything on the affected hives. Seems like I decided not to do anything on the assuption that the EFB was probably a pretty effective mite treatment in its own right.


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## squarepeg

understood jim and so glad to hear you were able to save that load.

i also understand that in the commercial world proprietary concerns make it more difficult to go public with some of the operational details so we really appreciate you being here, 

but i am wondering, generally speaking amongst commercials and not so much for your operation in particular,

with low bulk honey prices one the one hand and the insatiable demand for packages on the other hand,

is it becoming more common for larger operations to forgo the honey crop and shake out excess bees after almonds to become packages for sale?


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## Gino45

squarepeg said:


> dar, i'm thinking our bees are generally resistant across the board but not bullet proof.
> 
> all the breeding in the world wouldn't get as much done as having some degree of oversight in place at the local level with respect to new beekeepers.
> 
> that 1.25 miles from my bees a well meaning person imported 12 colonies over a three year period only to not pay due diligence to prevent their collaspe and subsequent rob out by other colonies in the neighborhood ought to be against the law. in fact i think it is.
> 
> shame on me i guess for not being proactive in this regard. i may try to contribute to the discussion with the locals about it but i'm not very optimistic what i have to say would be well received.
> .



I may be way off the mark here; however, after reading through much of this thread I keep thinking PMS, that is parasitic mite syndrome. PMS can sometimes have the appearance of EFB as well as similarities to chalkbrood, etc.; however, reduce the mite population and it will disappear as well.

And I must say that squarepeg has been living a sheltered life if the nearest bees to his are over a mile away. That is so far from my reality it is laughable.

Please don't take offense. I just felt the need to introduce a different possibility. And I had to make the effort of getting a new password (PITA) in order to do so.


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## squarepeg

always good to consider all the possibilities gino.

by the time we get to late march it's almost (but not entirely) impossible to find a mite in my colonies. one can uncap dozen after dozen of capped drone brood and not find one.

pms is more of a late season than early season entity, and the more common presentations include things like deformed wings, crawlers, and brood dying in the capped stage.

very young larvae and/or their pool of jelly turning yellow is pathognomonic for efb, subject to definitive testing.

you may have missed it in the thread, but efb was confirmed using the vita field test:

https://www.vita-europe.com/beehealth/products/efb-diagnostic-test-kit/


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## WesternWilson

I think it is worth emphasizing again the importance of using the Vita Life kits (which seem to be on back order everywhere this year) to confirm an EFB or AFB diagnosis. The foulbroods will not go away with feeding or a good mite treatment, and feeding and mite treatments do nothing to clean up the foulbrood-contaminated bee bread and honey in the frames.

EFB is NOT PMS, although mites apparently can vector the foulbroods. And the almond orchards aren't just a mite fest, they are a place diseases are traded around too.

When you see EFB, you treat the whole apiary. Why? Because as discussed earlier in the thread, research shows that once one colony in an apiary has EFB, levels of EFB bacteria rise in all nearby colonies as well, presumably from drift. And/or they have all been robbing from an infected source. Put your bees in quarantine: no swapping stuff between hives, no moving bees around, no nuc or package sales.

Once you have confirmed your field diagnosis with a test kit, you can medicate the entire apiary to prevent spread, then apply the medicate-shook swarm-medicate protocol to affected colonies. All the equipment the infected bees lived on has to be disinfected: trash/burn all brood and stores by punching out the foundation if you can. If the brood and stores are on solid plastic frames, trash/burn them. Wood frames, boxes, inner cover, outer cover should all be scraped as clean as possible, then irradiated OR soaked in a 5parts water:1part bleach for 20 minutes. All gloves and suits to be washed. All tools to be soaked in hot water and washing soda, all the wax and propolis scrubbed off them, and then the tools are also soaked in 5water:1bleach for 20 minutes.

It is a lot of messy work, but if you adhere strictly to a policy of returning to the yard only disinfected equipment, you should prevent rebloom of the foulbrood.


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## crofter

Gino45 said:


> I may be way off the mark here; however, after reading through much of this thread I keep thinking PMS, that is parasitic mite syndrome. PMS can sometimes have the appearance of EFB as well as similarities to chalkbrood, etc.; however, reduce the mite population and it will disappear as well.
> 
> And I must say that squarepeg has been living a sheltered life if the nearest bees to his are over a mile away. That is so far from my reality it is laughable.
> 
> Please don't take offense. I just felt the need to introduce a different possibility. And I had to make the effort of getting a new password (PITA) in order to do so.



Perhaps I am off the mark but unless I am misunderstanding the highlighted sentence I think this is not a good idea to promote. Misdiagnosing a disease in the first place can indeed result in some spontaneous cures. If the ailment was not genuine EFB, treating for mites could suggest that it EFB was only a secondary inconvenience associate with Varroa.

Due to its ability to leapfrog from one colony to another, dont dither around waiting for it to go away by itself. 

Would anyone suggest that the pictures below were anything besides EFB?


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## jim lyon

squarepeg said:


> but i am wondering, generally speaking amongst commercials and not so much for your operation in particular,
> 
> with low bulk honey prices one the one hand and the insatiable demand for packages on the other hand,
> 
> is it becoming more common for larger operations to forgo the honey crop and shake out excess bees after almonds to become packages for sale?


Commercial beekeeping has certainly evolved since the almond rush began. The demand for hives has started somewhat of a separate California pollination niche of hives that are raised solely for pollination with no plans for summer honey crops. Many of those beekeepers have found a secondary income after the almonds selling bulk bees just as you have described, some chase less lucrative pollination contracts and often end up trying to find whatever forage they can to keep their hives from regressing. However just as many hives are split immediately after the almonds and hauled north (or east) for summer honey production. Most years this can be pulled off just fine although the timing is pretty tight and a down side is the extended brooding season and a late summer honey flow can make timely late summer mite treatments problematic. If you can do both its certainly profitable but the honey income can be pretty labor intensive and hard earned compared to a pollination check. I met one guy who had a single semi load of bees that he moved all over the country for different pollination gigs, seemed to be doing quite well for himself and said honey is just a nuisance for him. It's kind of hard to sum up this industry in a few paragraphs as there are lots of unique beekeeping models around the country and lots of different ways to derive income from beekeeping.


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## squarepeg

i appreciate you taking the time to generate that insightful reply jim.

it's a sensible business model whereby bees leaving almonds late feb/early march end up in the deep south, where they can be used to populate packages and nucs that can be ready in time for early season sales a little farther to the north.

but i wish it wasn't.


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## WesternWilson

squarepeg said:


> i appreciate you taking the time to generate that insightful reply jim.
> 
> it's a sensible business model whereby bees leaving almonds late feb/early march end up in the deep south, where they can be used to populate packages and nucs that can be ready in time for early season sales a little farther to the north.
> 
> but i wish it wasn't.


Can I second that emotion? It makes no long term sense to move bees to the almonds en masse every year, where they trade pests and diseases, then disperse those all across the continent....often to new bekeepers who fail to recognize the signs of trouble until it is too late.

I sure hope the CA almond board is funding the foulbrood vaccination research that is in progress. And gene manipulation in Varroa. If we could shut down the foulbroods and Varroa, mobile pollination and vast congregations of bees would not be such an issue.


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## username00101

I just spotted EFB about 5 days ago. I've been doing regular inspections, this is a fast moving bacteria. A week ago I barely found much, just one or two colonies here and there. I immediately called my state apiarist and ordered a test kit.

Today I confirmed EFB in my hives. I called back the state apiarist and told him I got a positive EFB result. I'm in Northeastern PA.

I need to treat these hives immediately. I got a veterinarians feed directive paper, but I don't know how to get that completed.

How much time do I have before my entire apiary is heavily infected? I've seen this disease now present itself in most of the colonies I've inspected. I'm now afraid to touch any other hives, for fear of spreading the disease.

I added 1.5 to 2 gallon frame feeders to all infected hives at this point. I DID notice that in some of the colonies adding food seems to be helping.

Shook swarms and new equipment isn't an option for me, I just don't have the money to buy new stuff.

My goal is to get that VFD tomorrow, I'll just drive to as many vets as I can until one gives me the VFD. I have the positive test result and pictures.

I'm going to treat with terramycin as soon as humanly possible. Hopefully that state inspector can bring some with him. 

Otherwise, if this doesn't clear itself up, this is probably the end of my beekeeping. 

Any advice on getting some terra pro?


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## WesternWilson

I think most bee clubs are securing friendly vets who trust that a positive test kit is enough to write a prescription on. So check with your local club(s) and see what your options are. Some feed stores may sell Oxysol 62.5, which is also used for chickens etc...you will have to ask around. 

I hear you on the expense of the shook swarm procedure, but rebloom rates in the following season fall to 5% when shook swarm is used, vs. 21% when OTC is used alone. One good reason to use wood frames with plastic foundation is that you can punch out the foundation, scrape and bleach the frames and just have the new foundation to buy, not the whole frame and foundation. If you are using all plastic frames, you can scrape, powerwash off as much material as possible and then bleach. 

You could get a couple of clean setups and then disinfect the used stuff to then be the shook swarm clean boxes for the next two hives, and so on.

To disinfect with bleach: scrape and clean as well as possible then soak in 1 part bleach:5 parts water solution for 20 minutes. I use large heavy plastic totes for this and rotate the supers to bleach one side at a time. 

Like you I found a couple of iffy larva one week (all was healthy the week before), then lots of affected larvae across all brood frames the next week. In years past I did not see much cross infection between hives (it seemed to take a few weeks for that to happen) but this year all the hives went down over a 10 day span. That suggests a big exposure (big robbing or big drift) to an infective source. 

I can't help but notice that in 2018 and 2019 EFB appeared right after the pollination bees were parked in nearby blueberry fields....something that needs more investigation to see if there is really causation rather than correlation.

Good luck! I have successfully treated EFB in the past. Hoping this year's treatments are successful as well.


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## username00101

Will the bees recover quickly once I get the OTC and apply it to the hives? 

It's possible I can save up some money later in the season to do shook swarm, but IDK how they'll build up in time to survive the winter.

I'm wondering if I have just 1 week before the colonies start to all dwindle into nothing? Or if I might have more than 1 week.


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## WesternWilson

I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U&t=2014s

EFB is a lot more serious than we have traditionally thought. Perhaps because new strains are out there.

The symptoms of EFB will go away once you use OTC because the medication suppresses the symptoms. Likely, the EFB is resident in the stores and will rebloom once you stop medicating. If you have no other choice, you can medicate and then see what happens. Your chances of success improve a whole lot if you also do a shook swarm after medicating.

You need to medicate ASAP not only for the sake of your bees, but to prevent your bees from spreading this disease to the beekeepers within your flight range.

Just out of curiousity, were your bees from a spring package?


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## username00101

WesternWilson said:


> I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but watch this:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U&t=2014s
> 
> EFB is a lot more serious than we have traditionally thought. Perhaps because new strains are out there.
> 
> The symptoms of EFB will go away once you use OTC because the medication suppresses the symptoms. Likely, the EFB is resident in the stores and will rebloom once you stop medicating. If you have no other choice, you can medicate and then see what happens. Your chances of success improve a whole lot if you also do a shook swarm after medicating.
> 
> You need to medicate ASAP not only for the sake of your bees, but to prevent your bees from spreading this disease to the beekeepers within your flight range.
> 
> Just out of curiousity, were your bees from a spring package?


I got a bunch of nucs from a supplier in central PA. It was only those nucs that are carrying the EFB. Who knows, now its probably spread to everything even the healthy hives I had.

What a disaster. 

I'm really upset now. I have no idea how to tell how advanced this virus is, but I KNOW this is serious by my inspections.


Even worse. I have no idea how to get Terramycin. Any suggestions or websites you can recommend?

I'm going to bring the mann lake VFD paper to a local vet tomorrow, but IDK what to ask for.


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## squarepeg

in my case mann lake communicated directly with the vet and they sent a fax or two back and forth. mann lake has an individual who oversees all of the vfd's. call them tomorrow and ask to speak with her.


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## username00101

Is there any other way to get OTC within a day or two?

I know some vets but from what I understand it takes a while to get seen.


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## squarepeg

username00101 said:


> Is there any other way to get OTC within a day or two?


no other (legal) way that that i am aware of. 

the first veterinary terramycin i got was way too concentrated and i didn't have a good way to mix it. the stuff mann lake has is ready to use.


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## enjambres

@ Username: EFB is not a virus, it's a bacteria. Otherwise, antibiotics would be pointless.

Taking the form to the vet won't do you any good. The vet has to go to the bees, see the problem, and then write the prescription.

I'd call your state bee inspector and ask which vets in your area do that. (Also inspector may be able to help trace back the problem to your nuc supplier.)

Not trying to add to your stress, just trying to save you from false starts.

Meanwhile be sure to institute strong anti cross-contamination protocols to keep it from spreading any more than it has. Do you know what they are?

EFB sucks, and dealing with it sucks _even more!_

Nancy


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## WesternWilson

enjambres said:


> EFB sucks, and dealing with it sucks _even more!_
> 
> Nancy


Nancy is so right, that quote deserves a repeat and a series of tee shirts!

What you can do right now, while sourcing OTC:

1. do what you can to prevent spread by either giving each hive their own hive tool (which never visits other hives), or heating up the hive tool in your pumped up smoker between hives.

2. beekeep with bare hands and wash in soapy, bleachy water between hives.

3. do not put frames or stores from one hive into another

4. arrange the hive entrances so they are as far from each other as possible and point different ways (reduces drift, which is very common within any group of hives) and/or put on robbing screens to discourage drift

5. disinfect ALL your spare equipment, ditch all extra frames of stores you have on hand to give back to the bees (since you cannot be sure they are not contaminated)

6. feed syrup and protein patties (feeding helps the sick larvae survive), consider acidfiying with lactic acid as that seems to help as well.

7. get an experienced beekeeper over to check the hives with you, preferably a member of a local club who has experience with the foulbroods.

And....if this foulbrood is in one hive only, consider euthanasia to shut down spread. You can kill a hive quickly and humanely with a big bottle of rubbing alcohol poured down the seams AT NIGHT WHEN ALL THE FORAGERS ARE HOME! Close up entrances before application, seal the hive, bag it and take it away next day for cleaning and disinfection.

Then, once you get the OTC, dose all the hives in the apiary as when one has foulbrood, the counts of the pathogen skyrocket in nearby hives. It is not just one hive that is sick, but the whole apiary.

_*One reason to buy local bees (usually nucs in May or later) is that you can inspect the bees before purchase and you are not bringing new/more diseases or pests into your area. In our club we are trying to all keep an extra colony or two in all beeyards to supply local demand for bees.*_

Somewhere online one of the bee supply places has a protocol for getting prescribed OTC. Will post it when I find it again.


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## username00101

Update.

*GREAT NEWS:* Veterinarian was more than happy to write up a feed directive.

*Good news:* I live close enough to Mann lake that I drove there and picked up terra pro.

*Bad news:*
Now for the not so great news: 

1) I did a fairly thorough inspection of all of my hives today. Unfortunately, virtually all of them have some stage of EFB. Half of them looked robust, the other half not so much. So I treated every hive except for 1 that had absolutely no signs of EFB, and very healthy brood.

2) I found 5 hives without queens. And one swarmed, landed in a tree, flew away with my mated queen in less than 1 hour. So now that's 6 queenless hives. I'm fairly confident 4 of them will be able to re-queen themselves, as they were already robust and did not show any sign of EFB when the queen cells were present. The other 2 are a bit FUBAR, and I might have to just bite the bullet and order 2 queens. The queen cells were actually rotting from EFB.


3) Any advice on what to do with colonies that are very strong in population, but had queen cells that were probably affected by EFB? Perhaps just order some queens and kill all the capped cells? I think I saw a hatched queen, she was pale and pretty miserable looking. Probably isn't going to survive a mating flight.

4) Also noticing some paralyzed wing virus. That is the bees that are sort of just unable to fly, so they land on the ground and run around aimlessly. Not a big pile of bees, but I do see them scattered around.

OVERALL: the majority of the colonies look strong, and were only at very early stages of EFB. The rest were either recently swarmed, no brood, nothing - or 2 of them had some queen cells that appeared to be rotting from EFB and little to no uncapped brood. Those colonies were still high population, but IDK what kind of condition those queens are in.

Thank you: This is far from over, but at least I administered treatment. I wanted to thank you for helping me take this situation seriously. It's been less than 7 days since I found this bacteria.


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## squarepeg

good job getting the ball rolling so quickly.

i'm not sure how to advise with respect to your queen situation, hopefully some of the others having more experience with treating will chime in.


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## username00101

squarepeg said:


> a few lessons learned:
> 
> 1. it was a little over 2 weeks from the time i realized i needed efb field test kits and had them in hand on a non-rainy day to perform the test. part of this was not considering efb when i first saw sick larvae. part of this had to do with placing the order during the suppliers' peak busy season. opportunity was lost with respect to trying to save the colonies as well opportunity was gained with respect to the spreading to neighboring colonies.
> 
> 2. it was even longer than that before i had terramycin on hand. it took a couple of days to get the vfd (veterinary feed directive) from the vet in order and again the wait time on delivery.
> 
> 3. the first terramycin i received is a product called 'tetroxy hca-280 soluble powder'. this stuff is 10 times more concentrated that the commercially available powders available from bee suppy companies. only 2 tablespoons has to be mixed with 2.5 lbs of powdered sugar to get it to the appropriate strength, and i don't have the means to blend in a way to ensure a uniform mix. it took only 1/8 tablespoon of this stuff to mix with 1 quart of syrup.
> 
> i think it would be prudent for all to consider having a test kit or two on hand.
> 
> technically vfd's are not supposed to be issued without a confirmed case, but if you happen to be friends with a vet...
> 
> it would also be prudent to have some kind of plan in place with respect to treatment or not, euthanization, destruction, removal to an isolated yard, ect. should this bug rear it's ugly head in your apiary.



Squarepeg - are there any recommendations for applying Terra-Pro?

I basically just sprinkled 1 tablespoon along both ends of the frames in the brood box with the most bees. Some definitely got down into the frames, but mostly just covered the tops of the combs, don't see how it could directly enter the brood cells.

I actually did see the bees directly eating the terra-pro in more than one hive, even after just 30 minutes or so after applying it.

I'm feeding virtually every hive at this point, but I need to be careful not to cause them to swarm. I lost a swarm today with a healthy mated queen. They landed in a tree, and less than an hour later they were gone. That wasn't a good feeling. I have no idea where it went.


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## WesternWilson

None of the hives I had this year that were in the requeening process while the EFB was untreated raised queens successfully...not sure if that is typical but makes me go hmmmm.

Your best option is to combine any of the queenless hives with queened hives via the newspaper method ASAP. This preserves your worker bees while making treatment easier (because you will have fewer stacks to treat). You can disinfect the extra equipment after the combine is complete to help build your stockpile of clean equipment to do a shook swarm on.

Crawlers are not a feature of EFB. Nor is deformed wing virus. These conditions are common when Varroa levels are high, so on your to-do list is effective Varroa control. Given that you will be stressing them with the OTC treatment and probably shook swarms, consider using Amitraz as it is not temperature dependent and is easy on queens...of which you are already in short supply.

Once you are done remediating the colonies and the EFB is dealt with, you can do some judicious queen rearing and splitting to build your apiary numbers.

For info on heading off swarming, and making the best new queens possible:
https://herewebee.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/go-forth-and-multiply/

Good info on bee diseases:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...ent.cfm?id=7&usg=AOvVaw1Frps0aEU8O7tUOSpTJzV7


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## squarepeg

username00101 said:


> Squarepeg - are there any recommendations for applying Terra-Pro?
> 
> I basically just sprinkled 1 tablespoon along both ends of the frames in the brood box with the most bees.


same here, just followed the instructions.

i think you'll find there will be some powder left when you return in 5 days.


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## username00101

Should I apply OTC to all colonies, even the broodless ones with virgin or recently mated queens?

3 of them started the queen cell process well before EFB took hold. This outbreak is really just about 1 week old, a week ago I saw virtually no symptoms in any hives.

I think I saw a mating flight today, which indicates that at least that queen was not affected.


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## WesternWilson

If you watch that video cited earlier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U

If you have EFB (or AFB for that matter) in one colony, let alone several, your counts of the pathogen skyrocket in all nearby colonies. So you should medicate them all. 

One dose is not going to be enough...usually you do the sprinkle dose (aka "flash treatment") to get some meds into the communal stomach as quickly as possible. Then you feed the bees 1:1 syrup with a dose of OTC in it. 

Optimally, once that syrup is consumed, you will do a shook swarm onto bare foundations, starve the bees for a day, then give one or two more feeds of OTC in syrup about 4 days apart.

That is the usual approach for best results. Changing the protocol will alter your chances of long term success, just do what you can.


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## username00101

OK, thanks for the input. 

I just applied Terra-pro powder to the other colonies as well.

It doesn't seem likely that shook swarm will work this year, it's already the middle of June and we have long, long, very cold winters. Most of my brood boxes are already full of drawn comb that has a decent amount of honey, they're going to need that to survive the winter. Truth is I just can't stomach doing shook swarms. This situation is crappy enough, I'd like to at least keep the bacteria low throughout the rest of the year, treat again in the fall proactively, and then again in the early spring. 

My plan, (if this treatment with terra-pro actually works) is to basically just keep applying terra-pro in the spring and fall for the 18 month period until bacterial levels become negligible. Next spring, I can do shook swarm on SOME of the hives, and put them in a new isolated beeyard with new equipment. The used equipment can be quarantined somewhere for the next 9 months. Perhaps I could continue to proactively use terra-pro until I cycle out all old equipment and keep it in quarantine for 18+ months.

The problem with doing shook swarms here are the LONG extremely cold winters. The only opportunity I have to do shook swarms is basically in the month of May, but irradiation takes place in March. So by the time I have a window to do irradiation, the bacterial level would be negligible again.

Such a crappy dilemma. I have to wait 48 days to consume any honey. The ONLY GOOD THING about this situation, is that this is a new beeyard.

Therefore, the bees are spending 99%+ of their time drawing out foundation. So I don't really lose out on much of a honey crop. 

Unfortunately, now I'm understanding that this drawn foundation will be contaminated for 18 months.

The honey they current have in the comb will all be consumed over the extremely long and cold winter we have here in the northeast.

Perhaps someone can point out the flaw in my above mentioned plan. I still have battles ahead of me, especially with a couple of these questionably queen-less hives with questionable virgin queens. There's at least 3 hives that I cannot say with confidence will be able to produce a viable queen. My plan is currently to just order mated queens and put them in next Friday. Hopefully the existing virgin queens will not kill these mated queens.


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## squarepeg

WesternWilson said:


> One dose is not going to be enough...usually you do the sprinkle dose (aka "flash treatment") to get some meds into the communal stomach as quickly as possible. Then you feed the bees 1:1 syrup with a dose of OTC in it.
> 
> Optimally, once that syrup is consumed, you will do a shook swarm onto bare foundations, starve the bees for a day, then give one or two more feeds of OTC in syrup about 4 days apart.


that sounds like a very sensible protocol ww. where does it come from?


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## squarepeg

username00101 said:


> Sounds like the honey will be contaminated now for at least 1 month after treating with Terra-pro, which is incredibly unfortunate because I was getting close to harvesting.


from the terra-pro label:

"Honey stored during medication periods in combs for surplus honey should be removed following final medication of the bee colony and must not be used for human food."

other sources say you have to wait 45 days after treatment before placing honey supers on to collect honey for human consumption.


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## WesternWilson

Here is an example of the gaps in knowledge about the whole challenge of EFB.

In the UK and Europe, any honey that may have been created during the time when OTC is on the hive or OTC stores are in the hive must be stored for 6 months before being offered for human consumption...why? Because OTC slowly degrades over time and essentially vanishes from the honey.

As for shook swarms and skipping them, of course you can. But the EFB bacterium can survive up to two years in the honey stored in the hive. So unless you get rid of all the stores that could possibly have been created while the EFB was active in the hive, you run a fairly high chance of the EFB recurring.

As Nancy has so eloquently stated...."EFB sucks". You really, really do not want this condition coming back to haunt you year after year. The single best way to prevent that from happening is shook swarms. Doing a shook swarm on every last colony in your yard gives better....much better...results than simply treating with oxytetracycline. 

It is a lot of work and expense...and that is beekeeping!

As for the stressful event idea: I am very skeptical that stress is the single precipitating factor for EFB infection. I think it is a butt-covering excuse for tolerating enduring reservoirs of EFB in your equipment and bees. What is stress? Hot weather? Cold weather? Moving? Staying still? Spring? Fall? Jeepers I have heard them all!

What is important is that EFB seems to be changing, morphing into different and ever more successful and virulent strains....strains that get moved around the country. So don't underestimate the challenge you are facing. This is not likely your grand-daddy's EFB, that "comes from stress" and "goes away in a flow".


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## username00101

Thankfully, here in the northeast USA, colonies regularly eat through most of their honey stores during a normal winter. If there IS any "pre-OTC" honey left in the spring, I can easily enough remove the few frames that remain, and destroy them. Maybe I should mark the capped honey frames so I can easily identify them after the winter? I'm just brainstorming.

After treating with OTC, what is the main source of future contamination? Surely there's EFB all over the dang place right now. On the outside of the hives, on the smoker, on the grass in front of the hive.

Even if I totally decontaminate external equipment, what do I need to be extra extra careful of ? Is it frames that HAD honey/brood in them? What about undrawn foundation that I've removed from some of the colonies?


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## WesternWilson

Eating this year's contaminated stores will bring with it the risk that your bees will feed EFB to the early winter/spring brood. 

Scrub your smoker bellows with soapy, bleachy water. Ditto all tools. Ditto any sticky surfaces. But the main preventive is getting rid of old comb, especially if it contains honey, pollen, nectar, bee bread or affected larvae.


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## squarepeg

WesternWilson said:


> But the EFB bacterium can survive up to two years in the honey stored in the hive.


i've been searching for info on that ww but haven't had any luck. source?

also interested in a source for the protocol you gave in post #148.


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## username00101

How dangerous Terra-pro to developing brood? In a couple of the hives, I pushed it down along the length of one of the outer frames( i.e., instead of applying along the end of the bars across the entire box, I just applied it along the length of one of one of the frames. 

The Terra-pro seems to mostly just fall down between the frames and coat the wax. I'm not sure how it enter and then land on a developing brood.


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## WesternWilson

Source is the National Bee Unit in the UK. They invest a lot of time and funding into the foulbroods and are an excellent source of information.

The M-SS-M protocol (medicate-shook swarm-medicate) is the best way to prevent EFB becoming resident in your apiary. Alas there is still a chance of rebloom in subsequent seasons, and it does not fix a persistent source of infection, but it remains your best bet...and all you can do. That and run with robbing screens on if drift bees are bringing the infection to you.


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## msl

I got an email forwarded to me that was written by a "someone" writing a pice for ABJ. 



> It seems that treating with an antibiotic will take care of the EFB, but there is about an 80% chance that the antibiotic will mess up their gut bione enough that they will get an opportunistic pathogen and not survive the winter. I've seen this happen more often than not in my own bees. Ive had very good luck with removing the worst brood combs and feeding sugar water pH adjusted to 4,5 with ascorbic acid powder.


Don't know about the acid, there doesn't seem to be any research published on it
It did strike me that I took 76% (20 out of 26) winter losses on the hives I treated late summer last year with OTC.
I think Ilharder had mentioned something to this effect... but I find it odd given the perception that OTC was often used proftlicitaly in the past, seeming with little issues... maby we have a new bug lurking?


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## WesternWilson

As we have noted throughout this thread, there is a lot we don't know about EFB/AFB, and it seems possible that unintended consequences of medicating may be part of that. 

There are different strains, so there will be variation in beekeeper experience.

I have medicated for foulbrood in the past with no long term issues. A few of the big pollination outfits in my area talk openly about using OTC to prevent the appearance of symptoms: their bees are on OTC a lot of the time. In the old days you were told to dose your bees spring and fall...no long term unusual mortality.

I also wonder what is the long term when with active foulbrood the colony dies pretty quickly...and gets the chance to spread the condition.

As for the acidification, Dr. Gordon Waddell (sp?) did a PhD thesis on the connection between blueberry pollination and EFB. He felt acidifying bee food to make up for the alkalinity of blueberry pollen had a protective effect. I think he went on to help develop Megabee, which is acidified. I think with lactic acid. Don't know if more work has been done on that.


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## squarepeg

i euthanized two more colonies today that despite being on otc for over three weeks continued to exhibit very spotty capped brood patterns, sick larvae, and populations dwindled beyond the point of no return.

these two were shook swarmed and given otc in both powder and syrup form.


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## WesternWilson

Squarepeg, it sounds as though your strain of EFB was oxytetracycline resistant. I have been fortunate as the brood looks perfect when medicated, indicating the strain I have is not OTC resistant. I will let you know how things go once the colonies are off medication (they will remain on OTC until the blueberry pollination bees leave the area).


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## username00101

Squarepeg, what is your approximate location?

Are you treating with terra-pro?

I am sorry to hear about your losses. 

Can you share pictures of your symptoms/ infected hives ?


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## wildbranch2007

username00101 said:


> I got a bunch of nucs from a supplier in central PA. It was only those nucs that are carrying the EFB.


would you mind giving the name of the supplier in central PA as many of those nucs show up locally, if not in the thread please send me a private message thanks


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## username00101

I spoke with the state inspector. He's coming to inspect the hives on Friday.

He told me that terra-pro powder is effective, and to treat every single hive in the apiary for the full course of treatment.


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## Flyer Jim

username00101 said:


> I spoke with the state inspector.
> 
> He told me that terra-pro powder is effective, and to treat every single hive in the apiary for the full course of treatment.


Do what he said , don't skip any.


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## WesternWilson

Also take a close look at the video we have been talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U

Which details the findings of the UK's National Bee Unit, that when one colony in a yard is symptomatic, pathogen counts in all nearby hives rise sharply, also note that shook swarming is more effective in preventing rebloom than is just treating with oxytet, and your best result will come from both treating AND performing a shook swarm. Why? Because the EFB can hide out in the honey and bee bread your bees made while infected.

Terra-Pro, which is oxytetracycline, is a medication that works when the strain of EFB your bees have is NOT resistant to oxytetracycline. Note that some strains of EFB are resistant.

You should also go over your inspection notes with your inspector to see if there are any clues in terms of origin of your EFB. I think you suspect your nuc provider? The inspector should pay them a visit and see if the possible pipeline of contaminated bees can be dealt with.


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## WesternWilson

Update:

I have completed the process of medication-shook swarming-medication in my apiary and the two hives that have been off meds for a week have normal open brood...so far. I will monitor them closely for the next few weeks in particular before declaring them cleared of EFB. I am keeping the rest on meds until the blueberry bees move on. This is the second year EFB has appeared when the pollination bees arrive, hope we have a repeat of last year when the EFB departed when those bees departed the area. It is a big coincidence...no proof, just sayin'...

I have also taken all equipment out of the yard, and have it sorted for scraping and disinfection. Everything. Nothing goes back to the yard that could possibly re-introduce the infection. I use a wash bucket with bleachy, soapy water to scrub my hands in between hives as I inspect.

I have written an info sheet for our bee club:
https://herewebee.wordpress.com/foulbrood-101-2/

Attached to this blog post:
https://herewebee.wordpress.com/2019/06/10/the-foulbroods-again/


----------



## username00101

Update.

The state inspector came today. Told me to treat for an extra week beyond the 3 treatments recommended by Terra-pro.

All of the hives that have queens are showing immediate signs of recovery upon treatment. Colonies that had no healthy uncapped brood 7 days ago are showing signs of recovery. It's been 6 days since I started treatment. 

Inspector said nothing about shook swarm, wanted me to prophylactically treat in the fall and spring.

He stressed again to treat every single hive, even if they weren't showing signs of EFB.

------------------


I talked to another state inspector a couple of days ago: Here's some advice he gave me. 

He didn't give me any timeline exactly, but indicated that early detection and then early treatment are important. 

The following were tips from the state inspector:

1. When treating with Terra-pro, it helps to mix it with powdered sugar. Then, for the first treatment sprinkle over the entire box, not just the ends of the frames. It's important to get the terra-pro mix down between all the frames in the entire brood box for the first treatment.

2. Use heaping tablespoons.

3. Treat for 3 full weeks if there's an outbreak.

4. Treat all hives, even uninfected ones.

5. After the first treatment sprinkled over the entire box, the next 2 (or 3) treatments should be applied only to the edges of the frames.

This inspector told me it was not necessary to treat prophylactically in the fall, but that treating prophylactically in the spring before the honey flow is important.

6. People who sell bees in PA are required to get inspected prior to sale, but there's no rule about selling bees on infected equipment if there's no outbreak currently taking place.


Neither inspector mentioned anything about shook swarm.


----------



## wildbranch2007

username00101 said:


> Update.
> 
> 5. People who sell bees in PA are required to get inspected prior to sale, but there's no rule about selling bees on infected equipment if there's no outbreak currently taking place.


so did you have to provide the name of the place you got your nucs from, would still like you to provide the name here so we can check anyone that got the same nucs from the same place.


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## WesternWilson

username00101 said:


> Update.
> 
> Neither inspector mentioned anything about shook swarm.


That is too bad: oxytetracycline just suppresses symptoms and does not clear your infected stores. There is no question that shook swarm is a) more effective in clearing and preventing a return of EFB than is using oxytetracycline alone and b) gives you the best results when used with oxytetracycline treatment.

At least by the sound of things, the strain of EFB you have is responding to the oxytet. Not all of them do.

A lot of beekeepers really don't want to go through the extra work and expense of the shook swarm process, but they run that 30% chance of a rebloom in the next year. I think there is a widespread, unexamined underestimation of what EFB does to the apiary and the apiarist, so no one takes it that seriously. They should!

As for your next season, after my first "go" with EFB I swore never to buy bees again, and I have stuck to that. I will bring in queens to boost the depth of my local bee gene pool, but not comb, stores and bees. The more we reduce bee movement, the more easy it is to drop local levels of pests and pathogens.


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## Cloverdale

I, too, have a sustainable apiary after having AFB in 2016 from a nuc frame. This year I found EFB in one hive, which I euthanized, got rid of all equipment and frames. So far it hasn’t spread. I would rather take the loss of equipment (and bees which I feel really bad about killing them) than to chance it coming back; I’d always have that worry of rebloom. I read somewhere that giving the hive too much room too soon can cause EFB, which I realized I did. I won’t ever do that again.


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## wildbranch2007

Cloverdale said:


> I, too, have a sustainable apiary after having AFB in 2016 from a nuc frame. This year I found EFB in one hive, which I euthanized, got rid of all equipment and frames. So far it hasn’t spread. I would rather take the loss of equipment (and bees which I feel really bad about killing them) than to chance it coming back; I’d always have that worry of rebloom. I read somewhere that giving the hive too much room too soon can cause EFB, which I realized I did. I won’t ever do that again.


:thumbsup:


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## WesternWilson

Cloverdale said:


> I read somewhere that giving the hive too much room too soon can cause EFB, which I realized I did. I won’t ever do that again.


EFB makes you question everything you have done as a beekeeper...but I seriously doubt giving them "too much room" caused the EFB. If stress were the precipitating factor, every package since the dawn of beekeeping would get EFB, or during every dearth, or after every winter. I think blaming EFB blooms on a stressor ducks the entire issue of: apiary hygiene, and ambient levels of EFB in your area. With so many of the state inspection systems now defunded and/or defanged, I think a lot of foulbrood is slipping through the cracks.

I am sure stresses do not help bees, but as a beekeeper, hearing "oh it's just spring stress and will go away in a flow". Not in my locale! It only goes away with treatment and there are usually infected bees close by when EFB appears in my bees.

As for adding room in spring, when the bees are bursting out of their 10 frames add any new room beside and below, not above, the broodnest. That way in a chilly spring, they still can take advantage of the hive thermodynamics (heat rising off the cluster).


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## Cloverdale

By too much room I think it resulted “in fewer nurse bees in colonies to feed larvae. At the onset of nectar flow in early spring, forage recruitment of house bees may increase rapidly resulting in few bees in colonies to feed honey bee larvae. Often, when the nurse bee to larvae ratio stabilizes later in the season, or remains stable throughout a season, symptoms disappear. However, this disease can occur throughout a season...” I know that there can be EFB bacteria in hives; this hive was very big and I put an empty deep in between the 2 broodnest deeps. This is the first time I have ever had EFB since I started in 2012. No nucs or packages since 2016. There are other beekeepers in the area. Deb


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## squarepeg

i agree with ww in that 'stress' isn't going to somehow make m. plutonius magically appear.

on the other hand i can see how colonies that are infected with less virulent types of efb that are seen to recover on their own or turn around when the weather improves and/or decent pollen and nectar become available...

might be stressed, say 'stretched', beyond the point of possible making a recovery due to beekeeper intervention, say aggressively opening up the broodnest and spreading the nurse bees too thin, or making a weak split.

(dna sequence typing is in the u.k. for identifying how virulent an efb strain is, and is used to determine which course of action is most appropriate. the less virulent strains are simply shook swarmed with no antibiotics used, whereas the most virulent strains are mandatory destruction by fire).


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## squarepeg

Cloverdale said:


> this hive was very big and I put an empty deep in between the 2 broodnest deeps.


did you split the broodnest in two, or separate the broodnest from stores of open honey and beebread?


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## Cloverdale

To tell the truth I didn’t check the pollen stores. I put the deep in between the broodnest, the overwintered 2 deeps, and they were bringing plenty of pollen in. The hive was a swarm from 2017. I checker boarded new foundation with drawn; they were working a queen cup, there was new wax around the edge of it, so it was more of a swarm prevention. There were two
supers on with new honey/nectar. I do an unlimited broodnest but I don’t think there was much brood in the supers.


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## squarepeg

understood. when you added the empty deep, was the broodnest in the bottom deep, the top deep, or split between the two deeps?


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## Cloverdale

squarepeg said:


> understood. when you added the empty deep, was the broodnest in the bottom deep, the top deep, or split between the two deeps?


Sorry about that SP, it was getting late for me here and I was tired  the broodnest was split. I have done this before with a big hive but used a medium in between with drawn frames. I do this :scratch: (brain misfire) often.  The weather pattern here is somewhat like a shot-brood pattern, rainy a day or two, then sunny, then cold, etc.


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## squarepeg

i can see how splitting broodnest like that would create challenges for the colony. it's tough to do much with it when split between the two boxes like that. 

what method did you use to confirm your efb diagnosis?


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## Cloverdale

squarepeg said:


> i can see how splitting broodnest like that would create challenges for the colony. it's tough to do much with it when split between the two boxes like that.
> 
> what method did you use to confirm your efb diagnosis?


As soon as I saw it, you can’t miss it, totally different from PMS. I confirmed with the test kit I had (serendipity  ).


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## squarepeg

good job cd. i agree with your decision to destroying the colony/equipment.

after experiencing the shook swarm/antibiotic regimen i won't be doing that anymore. going forward i'll be on a strict destruction by fire with all subsequent encounters.

out of the 8 or so that i tried to treat, 4 are gone, 2 will be gone as soon as i have time to gone them, and 2 have responded favorably although their strength isn't much to brag about and we are entering our prolonged dearth period here.

these 2 that will be allowed to carry on (although they will get requeened soon from treatment free stock) were impacted to a lesser degree and never got down to less than 10 deep frames of bees. they had already put up and starting capping their first super of honey when i started the terramycin. they were allowed to keep all of their frames.

so there's a chance the efb will rebloom in them and if so they'll be history as well.

i have 7 survivoring colonies (and one super strong swarm that was caught from one of them) that somehow evaded infection and they couldn't be any stronger. they have 41 supers of mostly capped honey on them most of which i need to harvest.

these were way too strong and had way too much honey on them to follow the suggestion to treat all hives in the yard. so i have 8 strong untreated colonies having escaped a nasty efb epidemic to propagate more colonies from.

my friend and 23 year treatment free queen and nuc supplier started his stock with 5 colonies back in 1996 that he collected from trees at the time varroa first hit here and was causing nearly 100% losses to everyone around.

i guess time will have to tell how all this plays out.


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## Cloverdale

You really had a bad episode with your hives; I do not like learning the hard way, but that seems to happen to me. I just can’t see treating and then thinking it might come back. After reading what Nancy (Enjambres) went through I have no tolerance for these brood diseases. It seems like you are recouping well with some great bees!


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## squarepeg

many thanks for that deb. fingers crossed, time will tell.

i think the treatment outcomes might have been better had it been started sooner. the amount of dwindling i saw during the time between ordering my test kits and having the antibiotic in hand was staggering.

because of this it's hard to make a judgement on how effective the terramycin was against this efb, but i really think several of the colonies should have had a better response. i am thinking about reaching out to the folks in the u.k. to see if they might be willing to sequence type a sample for me.

in the meantime there is some behind the scenes work going on in terms of coming up with sterilization by radiation in this part of the country, as well as looking for a graduate student in need of a thesis or dissertation project destined to become for efb what sam ramsey became for varroa.

it's a shame that we are so friggin' far behind here in the u.s. when it comes to efb.


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## username00101

Update with pictures.

*10 days post treatment. 3 treatments applied.
*
Infected Colony: https://imgur.com/a/AOSGomN

Previously Infected Colonies: https://imgur.com/a/lnvQEiY

At this point only 1 colony is still showing obvious signs of EFB. 1 colony shows mild signs. Four others that were previously heavily infected are no longer showing any signs of infection.


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## username00101

What to do with that 1 colony that is still showing obvious signs of EFB? 

10 days ago it had zero uncapped healthy brood. Now it has uncapped brood that is surviving into the capped stage, but the uncapped brood is still showing signs of EFB.


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## Cloverdale

username00101 said:


> What to do with that 1 colony that is still showing obvious signs of EFB?
> 
> 10 days ago it had zero uncapped healthy brood. Now it has uncapped brood that is surviving into the capped stage, but the uncapped brood is still showing signs of EFB.


In my opinion I would euthanize it and burn the equipment. Deb


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## username00101

Cloverdale said:


> In my opinion I would euthanize it and burn the equipment. Deb


:/


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## username00101

Terra-pro instructions are quite bad. Mann-lake obviously didn't do any research on this product before writing those instructions.

1. If this product is placed on the tops of the frames, it tends to just get wet and ignored by the bees. I've rarely seen this product NOT ignored by the bees sitting on the frames. 

2. If it's extremely moist and rainy for multiple days, this product isn't going to work if it's just sitting on top of those bars. I opened up multiple hives today and it was just sitting there getting moist. 

3. I've noticed absolutely no damage to brood from applying it between the frames and onto the nurse bees. I readily applied terra-pro between frames 2 days ago, I checked those frames today, the uncapped brood is still alive and healthy.

4. The recommended treatment of 3 treatments 4 or 5 days apart is quite incorrect. This treatment must be applied for no less than 3 weeks. I've noticed massive improvements in most of the infected hives, but there's still 1 or 2 that are mostly cured, but still infected. If I had followed the instructions, these hives would have probably re-infected all the rest if they were unable to cure themselves.

In conclusion, treat for 3 weeks and get plenty of terra-pro down between the frames on the nurse bees. Treat more than the instructions "recommend", especially if there's a lot of rain, and there's still infected hives.


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## Cloverdale

Does Terra Pro kill the bacteria that might remain in the frames?


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## squarepeg

username00101 said:


> If I had followed the instructions, these hives would have probably re-infected all the rest if they were unable to cure themselves.





Cloverdale said:


> Does Terra Pro kill the bacteria that might remain in the frames?


good point deb. if one is relying strictly on not seeing any affected larvae to make the determination the bacteria is gone and no longer a threat to that colony and it's neighbors, then overlooked is the fact that it's the food fed to those larvae that's really the problem...

now that we know the bacteria can survive for extended periods in beebread and honey, as well as get pooped into the hive by newly emerged workers that can't get out of the hive to defecate, ww's admonition to include shook swarming bears consideration.

this is to reduce the chances of rebloom after the antibiotic is stopped.

i shook swarm a couple of mine. one of them didn't respond to the terramycin. the other one did respond to terramycin, but absconded once the first rounds of 'healthy' workers emerged following treatment. i didn't cage the queens, but learned later that simply putting a queen excluder just above the bottom board would have worked just as well to prevent absconding.

i'm left with only a couple colonies out of about 8 or 9 that were treated and responded well to the antibiotic, and these two weren't shook swarmed. if either of these reblooms it's the burn pile for them.


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## Cloverdale

Hypothetically, could an antibiotic (oxy) be used that is for chickens/pigs?


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## squarepeg

Cloverdale said:


> Hypothetically, could an antibiotic (oxy) be used that is for chickens/pigs?


yes, it's the same drug. the first package i ended up with was formulated for that use. it turned out to be way too concentrated to effectively mix with powdered sugar for bees, but it was useful to mix up syrup with.


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## Fusion_power

The standard treatment years ago was prophylactic in fall with 3 applications of powdered sugar/Terra spaced a week apart, i.e. 3 weeks of coverage. Jim Tew published information about using oxytetracycline in syrup about 30 years ago, but with the caveat that it could wind up stored as honey. I have never seen powdered sugar mixed with oxytetracycline ignored by the bees. We could purchase 50% oxytetracycline from Kelley's at that time and had standard formulas to mix it for use. I'm going on memory with this, I think it was one heaping tablespoon of tm50 mixed with one standard box of powdered sugar. Application was one tablespoon of the mix on the tops of the frames at the edge of the cluster. Note that it was NOT specifically on the ends of the top bars. If the cluster extends all the way across the frames, then apply on the ends of the top bars. If a small cluster is in the middle of the box, then apply on the top bars at the edge of the cluster. Several posts in this thread suggest no problems if applied directly above the brood. There was a study back in the 1980's published in Gleanings that showed brood killed and dragged from the hive by the bees after powdered sugar/Terra was applied directly above open brood. There is a lot of waste using powdered sugar/terra as it drops down between the frames and is either ignored on the bottom board or the bees drag it out of the hive and discard it. In my opinion, syrup feeding is far more efficient and effective if consistent doses can be applied at the right time. I would only use syrup if fighting an active infection. I would not harvest honey from any hive that was treated during a nectar flow.


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## crofter

I believe that some tests showed more antibiotic showed up in honey with a syrup based treatment than when mixed in the powdered sugar. Probably some people were not overly cautious about hold back time before supering. I wonder if the syrup might be refused if there was a flow on? If they are drinking it it would seem to be a sure way of getting it where it is needed and not depend on tracking around and licking off powder.

I didnt find there was any problem with the bees cleaning up the powdered sugar. I did put it on frame ends and frame ledges.

I have not seen active signs of EFB this spring and summer. Just a thought; perhaps it would not be bad idea to dust both sides of brood frames and sacrifice a few rounds of eggs and larvae. A brood break might be of use especially if 50% or more was dieing anyway and continuing the vicious cycle.


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## squarepeg

i think there is a comment by perhaps enjambres or westernwilson in which is described 'dusting' the bees with the powdered form on the first application. 

it's reasonable to believe that the action of removing it from each other would tend to get the antibiotic started in the 'collective stomach' of the hive, as well as get them 'interested' in eating it.

i put most on the end bars from which it was readily consumed, but did go ahead and shake a little bit into the seams each time.

likewise with the syrup i dribbled a little bit on the bees to encourage them to start used the internally housed quail waterer feeder.

i did have a little bit of the terra-pro get damp and clump up, rendering it no longer interesting to the bees. i just removed the clumps and put fresh it it's place.

all treated colonies had terra-pro availble and were consuming it at their own pace for 4+ weeks.


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## squarepeg

so back to the options question....

and taken from the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0B9o4GHq7U&feature=youtu.be

starting at about time stamp 21:27 dr. stainton puts up these slides tabling preliminary data on treatment success, (which is defined at not having efb recur in an apiary after treatment), for three different efb sequence types (or strains) comparing shook swarming, oxytetracycline, and destruction.









for sequence types 2 (outbreaks limited to southwestern england) & 3 (outbreaks evenly distributed through most of england), destruction was demonstrably better than shook swarming or antibiotic therapy.

pretty much the same with sequence type 5 although this strain wasn't particularly phased with oxytet.









again, this is preliminary with dr. budge carrying out a more extensive look at treament successs vs. treatment modality vs. sequence type.









i'm setting up a meeting with the folks in the 'food and animal sciences' department at alabama a&m university to see if doing similar here is something they might be interested in.


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## Cloverdale

I think that the UK has a different protocol for EFB treatment than the US does. I think (I’m just not completely sure) this was discussed on Bee-l recently.


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## squarepeg

Cloverdale said:


> I think that the UK has a different protocol for EFB treatment than the US does.


there isn't any real protocol here in the u.s.

for a lot of europe efb is a notifiable condition:









from:

http://www.oie.int/eng/EMERGING_INF...tations/8_OIEBeeSymposium2017_DrCharriere.pdf

also from that link:









efb cases have dropped by over half in switzerland since implementing mandatory notification and destruction by fire.


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## enjambres

I used Oxytet mixed with a precisely-measured amount of powdered sugar (both ingredients measured by weight, to formulate the correct per-hive dose.)

Then I used a cinnamon sugar type of shaker to sprinkle the dose in each box. I used a shield placed over the center of the box (covering multiple frames) to keep the sugar/oxytet mixture from being placed on any frame with open brood. It is toxic/lethal to open brood and that was the last thing I wanted to do to the few surviving larvae. I also sprinkled it along the (short) edges of the box at the end of the frames.

Previously I had gone through each hive and examined each frame and placed the frames with brood in them in the center of each box; if there was an uneven number of frames the extra one was placed in the lower box. Each frame was marked with a symbol so when I looked down at the tops of the frames I could see exactly which ones needed to be shielded. This made the treatment fast and accurate. I unstacked it each hive, leaving the lowest brood box in place; sprinkled that one and topped with the next one up, and so on. The really sick ones had only one frame with brood, but since I treated every colony in the yard, even the asymptomatic ones, some of then had brood in two or three boxes.

What I used for a shield was the right-angled piece of Lexan that normally covers the slot in my BeeMax -style top feeders.

Here are pictures of me doing it: Shaking the mix on






Top view of box after applying mix








Nancy


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## squarepeg

nice technique there nancy, thanks for sharing.

you may have already posted this, sorry if i missed it, but when was your last treatment and how long since you've seen efb in your apiary?


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## Cloverdale

squarepeg said:


> there isn't any real protocol here in the u.s.
> 
> for a lot of europe efb is a notifiable condition:
> 
> View attachment 49483
> 
> 
> from:
> 
> http://www.oie.int/eng/EMERGING_INF...tations/8_OIEBeeSymposium2017_DrCharriere.pdf
> 
> also from that link:
> 
> View attachment 49485
> 
> 
> efb cases have dropped by over half in switzerland since implementing mandatory notification and destruction by fire.


What I meant was the amount of antibiotics that are applied; we do 3 treatments, I think they do a different amount. Maybe Nancy knows? I couldn’t find that particular response on bee-l in the archives. Deb


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## squarepeg

understood deb. 

what is also missing in my searches so far is an assessment of combining shook swarming with antibiotic treatment like nancy and westernwilson are reporting.

if i recall westernwilson has had a rebloom of efb this year. not sure about nancy.

i was surprised to see such a high rate of recurrence (23% - 31% of apiaries) even after the destruction of infected colonies in the examples dr. stainton gave in the video.


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## crofter

I have seen a few sources promoting extending the treatments. If there are still existing sources of potential reinfection that would be my inclination. I burned the frames of the worst infected colonies and I continued treatments last summer till I saw no more compromised larvae occurring. Things looked OK by fall close out; I was quite prepared though to see it return this spring but so far no sign. Maybe I go lucky with having a type of EFB that is less virulent and persistent than what some of you are dealing with.

My findings were complicated by the 4 colonies that died in March - April that could have well died from suffocation: At least there is no other obvious reason that I could see for the dieouts. I have them sealed and stored and am not brave (or foolish) enough to put bees in them this year.

I hope that the prodding of Squarepeg and others will get some better typing of the different strains of active EFB here on this continent. With such widely differring experience amongst competent beekeepers it seems to me that EFB has found some new tricks. If that is the case, denial is not our friend.


----------



## username00101

enjambres said:


> I used Oxytet mixed with a precisely-measured amount of powdered sugar (both ingredients measured by weight, to formulate the correct per-hive dose.)
> 
> Then I used a cinnamon sugar type of shaker to sprinkle the dose in each box. I used a shield placed over the center of the box (covering multiple frames) to keep the sugar/oxytet mixture from being placed on any frame with open brood. It is toxic/lethal to open brood and that was the last thing I wanted to do to the few surviving larvae. I also sprinkled it along the (short) edges of the box at the end of the frames.
> 
> Previously I had gone through each hive and examined each frame and placed the frames with brood in them in the center of each box; if there was an uneven number of frames the extra one was placed in the lower box. Each frame was marked with a symbol so when I looked down at the tops of the frames I could see exactly which ones needed to be shielded. This made the treatment fast and accurate. I unstacked it each hive, leaving the lowest brood box in place; sprinkled that one and topped with the next one up, and so on. The really sick ones had only one frame with brood, but since I treated every colony in the yard, even the asymptomatic ones, some of then had brood in two or three boxes.
> 
> What I used for a shield was the right-angled piece of Lexan that normally covers the slot in my BeeMax -style top feeders.
> 
> Here are pictures of me doing it: Shaking the mix on
> View attachment 49487
> Top view of box after applying mix
> View attachment 49489
> 
> 
> Nancy


Thanks for sharing. This is a really good idea, but it's also incredibly time consuming.

I am still not convinced that getting some of the terra-pro or powdered sugar mixture between the frames will kill a lot of the uncapped brood.

Anyone here happen to have a link or a name of the source that states that terra-pro kills uncapped brood?


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## username00101

crofter said:


> I have seen a few sources promoting extending the treatments.


Any chance you can name or share the sources regarding treatment you refer to?


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## crofter

username00101 said:


> Any chance you can name or share the sources regarding treatment you refer to?


It was individuals, not controlled research; possibly on Bee_L forum. Some sources seem inclined make recommendations strongly in line with minimizing the development of resistance and others the emphasis is on ending the infection decisively with resistance factor being secondary. 

In the long perspective not using antibiotics at all, might be the wisest, but it will not be an easy position to sell. Especially so if EFB is on the verge of a large scale breakout.


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## wildbranch2007

crofter said:


> It was individuals, not controlled research; possibly on Bee_L forum. Some sources seem inclined make recommendations strongly in line with minimizing the development of resistance and others the emphasis is on ending the infection decisively with resistance factor being secondary.


I know on bee-l that Randy was the one that said to treat the whole yard or at least all the hives around the infected hive at one point.


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## gww

There is a current discussion going on on Bee L now.
Cheers
gww


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## username00101

Is there any general consensus about the outcome of capped swarm queen cells that were formed during a EFB outbreak?

I currently have a number of colonies that are in the process of hatching out capped swarm cells that were formed during an EFB outbreak that hit the entire apiary. 

If the capped cells produce low quality queens, or queens that cannot mate, how exactly do I go about requeening the colonies?


----------



## enjambres

@Squarepeg,

I had the EFB in the Spring (and then extending into summer, because I dithered about treating) of 2017. What I had before EFB was a fire in my yard in early March, that got within inches of the stacks, and killed a couple of them outright , and immediately) from the smoke of burning plastic insulation. That, I believe, was the initiating stressor, followed by a poor, wet spring, with inconsistent pollen availability late into the season. (Some-time since then I happened upon an old post of mine asking if people who do Walt Wright's anti-swarming/nectar management manipulations for several years start to see an erratic brood pattern on the frames. Answer: no. In reality what I was seeing was the first stages of unrecognized EFB infection causing the poor pattern. What I was seeing was an ample amount of eggs, but very little capped brood. Now that sort of thing would immediately draw my attention

I had one colony that looked the same way in the early summer of 2018, but it tested negative, repeatedly, which was very puzzling. It was small and weak, and eventually died. I removed it it early on and in the end did not treat it, nor any other colony. All of them looked strong and healthy throughout the summer, so I was hopeful. But then three very large colonies, including two that had never shown symptoms, and both of "less-affected" queen line, died over the fall/winter. Not mite-caused (not obvious virus, either), not starvation, just a sudden, flat-out crash. That was the most depressing of all, since it was mysterious. What was different last year was a huge, late, influx of SHB, not resulting in "sliming" just hundreds of and hundreds of them driving the bees crazy. 

Oddly, the one queen line that was initially most affected (all daughter queens expressed disease symptoms in the first year), has turned out to survive with more colonies. Of the three other queen lines the one with second-most affected individual survived with a single remaining hive. One of least-affected lines died completely because of whatever happened late last year. And the Never-showed any signs queen line suffered losses last year, and is now down to only a single hive, too. 

This is partly my fault because I deliberately did not make any increase at all last year, not wanting any more sick hives, even though none except the small weak one showed any sign of disease. I figure the surviving string ones would be OK for another year, never dreaming what would happen over the winter. 

This weekend I am planning to make some splits.

@Username:

It was not at all time consuming to arrange the frames in the way I described. By the time I was ready to treat, the brood areas had become somewhat disorganized, so I just arranged them and marked them so all the remaining active brood frames were centralized in the boxes. If the frame had open brood it got a mark, If it had open and affected brood it got a different mark. (And those frames have since all been removed from service for destruction.) The marks were colored dots. Shaking the Oxy/sugar mix took only 1-2 minutes per box per dose. What did take some time was carefully measuring each colonies individual dose into a little plastic tub. I am glad I did that because I then knew that each colony got exactly its full dose, not more, but most importantly, not less. Perhaps that's one of the reasons I did not see a re-bloom in the second year.

Regarding the rebloom: some of mt colonies got double or single shook swarms in addition to treatment, but some did not. I was struggling - and not really grappling - with the equipment replacement issues at the outset. In hindsight, I should have simply replaced everything immediately by doing double shook swarms. In the end by doing it in dribs and drabs I didn't buy fewer replacements, anyway. I'd still have the same mountain of contaminated gear, but perhaps fewer losses, and quicker. 

Having failed to find a source for the correct radiation (15 KiloGrays, not 10) I have been reduced to letting time pass on the equipment. I am planning to try an acetic acid treatment in a few weeks and then regard everything as safe for reuse after 24 months off-hive.. 

I started this with nearly 20 colonies, I now have enough "contaminated" base/full set of boxes & supers/lids/accessory equipment sets for more than 60 colonies. In other words three times as many sets as I ever had hives in the first place. And I am down to only six living colonies right now. My basic set per hive is: solid BB, screen BB, lower shim, six 10-frame deeps, one medium pollen box, upper shim, quilt box, vent shim inner/cover, Snelgrove board, escape board, wood framed queen-excluder, entrance reducer, robbing screens (upper and lower entrance), top-feeder box with plastic cover, wooden telescoping cover and about 80 frames per colony. 

EFB sucks, and costs a fortune to deal with

Nancy


----------



## username00101

Reporting back. 4th treatment applied today. All but 2 hives are cured of EFB. 1 of those 2 is only showing mild symptoms. The one with serious symptoms seems to have regressed, unfortunately. I gave it an extra dose, and sprinkled terra-pro all over all the nurse bees and all the frames liberally.

What have I learned since my last inspection?

1. Dusting all of the frames and the nurse bees is highly effective at knocking down EFB. Both hives that I coated with a liberal application of OTC terra-pro have either fully recovered, or are practically symptom free. One hive that I simply did the "end bar" application method seems to have had a rebloom. 

2. There's apparently little to no noticable toxicity to the brood from terra-pro. I checked the same hive that I covered with 2 heaping tablespoons of terra-pro, and all the previously uncapped brood that was exposed to the terra-pro was capped and healthy. Moreover, the entire hive was nearly free of efb symptoms.

3. Queen cells that are capped during an EFB outbreak are a hit or miss. 2/4 colonies that formed queen cells during the efb outbreak survived mating flights and are now laying eggs. The other 2 are now queenless.


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## Fusion_power

One of the interesting possibilities with EFB is that contaminated equipment can potentially be stored for 2 years after which it should be pathogen free. I wonder if treatment with high intensity UV light would shorten the storage interval? I store unused bee equipment in my greenhouse with summer temps in the 120 to 130 range. This is not hot enough to melt combs, but is highly likely it kills some organisms that could otherwise be a problem.


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## username00101

Talked to my neighbor today who lives down the road from me.

He lost 50% of his hives so far from EFB. Doesn't seem interested in OTC, I've offered. He tried requeening his hives a couple of weeks ago when I started treating, apparently they still all died.

I respect his decision not to treat with OTC, he's not obligated to treat, but he has one hive that's getting robbed because it's totally empty.

I politely asked him to close the hive, but he didn't seem to be convinced EFB is going to spread into my colonies from robbing.

I hope he's right.

Glad I treated.


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## squarepeg

username, has the efb in your neighbor's hives been confirmed by testing?

if so you can hope all you want to but the spreading of the bacteria into neighboring hives by robbing is pretty much a certainty.

if this is happening i would definitely let your state inspector know.

ticks me off just hearing about it.


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## username00101

squarepeg said:


> username, has the efb in your neighbor's hives been confirmed by testing?
> 
> if so you can hope all you want to but the spreading of the bacteria into neighboring hives by robbing is pretty much a certainty.
> 
> if this is happening i would definitely let your state inspector know.
> 
> ticks me off just hearing about it.



This beekeeper told me he's going to bring new hives from his other locations to replace the ones that died from EFB. So that empty hive that's being robbed will hopefully be gone?

The state inspector knows, and hasn't done anything. There's only so much that I can do. When he was here I told him about my neighbor.

This beekeeper didn't seem to connect the dots that losing half his hives in 2 weeks from EFB is anything to be concerned with.

Looks like there's 1 hive that's totally empty and being robbed, the others are at least alive and have entrance reducers.


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## wildbranch2007

squarepeg said:


> if this is happening i would definitely let your state inspector know.
> 
> ticks me off just hearing about it.


but as of now up here there isn't anything the inspector's can do that I'm aware of, it's not a burnable disease, nor can they force you to use antibiotics, best I know they can inspect it and clean their hive tools and tell you yup you have it. Now if your in NY they can't even notify any one in the area, and won't even announce what towns are affected. lovely


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## squarepeg

:ws:

big time.


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## username00101

wildbranch2007 said:


> but as of now up here there isn't anything the inspector's can do that I'm aware of, it's not a burnable disease, nor can they force you to use antibiotics, best I know they can inspect it and clean their hive tools and tell you yup you have it. Now if your in NY they can't even notify any one in the area, and won't even announce what towns are affected. lovely


Same here.


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## username00101

Despite my best efforts, 1 of the hives cannot seem to rid itself of EFB. I've given them less space, and added a 2nd feeder, and a very generous dose of OTC. 

All the other hives are cured.

My neighbor informed me that he open feeds dead outs and extracted comb. 

Of course, I have many more hives than he does, and they're less than a quarter mile from my house. Doesn't seem to be interested in cooperating with EFB outbreak control (like not allowing robbing or open feeding).

*shaking my head*


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## wildbranch2007

username00101 said:


> *shaking my head*


the only thing that you can hope for, eventually they usually give up, find and outyard and move the bees, there are some other things that can be done, but they put you in jail for those. :no:


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## squarepeg

Fusion_power said:


> One of the interesting possibilities with EFB is that contaminated equipment can potentially be stored for 2 years after which it should be pathogen free. I wonder if treatment with high intensity UV light would shorten the storage interval?


interesting that you mention uv light dar, it's one of the approaches that the professor at alabama a&m is looking into.

since m. plutonius is anaerobic to slightly microaerophilic one wouldn't expect it to survive very long when exposed to air. i'm guessing that unless the bacteria happens to be at the bottom of a cell containing honey or beebread it wouldn't be able to survive on 'dry' comb.

at least that's my hope with the 300 or so frames of the completely empty comb that i've washed, bleached, and now have in dry storage.

i'm still coming up short as far as locating a study in which the survivability of m. plutonius on comb has examined. do you recall where you saw the 2 year time frame mentioned?


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## WesternWilson

As you may know I had an EFB catastrophe this spring, with 18 of 20 hives hit simultaneously with EFB in early May. Thinking I had only a case or two I began euthanizing (the surest way of preventing spread) until I realized they ALL had EFB, and if I kept euthanizing I would be bee-less this year, and lose the queen line we have been working on, such as it is.

So, following the advice of the National Bee Unit in the UK, I decided to do the medicate-shook swarm-medicate protocol. In that process, for which you must obtain a source of oxytetracycline, and a fresh or disinfected set of equipment for each colony about to undergo treatment, you lose all your brood and all your stores (neither of which can be disinfected). All woodenware must be disinfected and the only option I had was scraping and bleach baths. I bought all new frames and foundations and am disinfecting every piece of woodenware I own as I cannot be sure they are not also infected. I could not do spring nuc sales, my honey harvest was severely reduced, and I had to take a pass on my usual queen rearing window (June).

My friend Tim was a huge help: all shook swarms were completed by May 22, after which the bees got a feeder full of oxytet in syrup. Today we did our first post-treatment health inspections (I had been dragging my feet, dreading the day of reckoning...). And he came over today to help me do the health checks on 18 colonies.

I am freakin' relieved and grateful that all the hives were disease free. This suggests three things:

1. the medicate-shook swarm-medicate protocol is, when the EFB is not resistant to oxytet, effective

2. whatever source infected the apiary in May is now gone (no reinfection in the month the bees have been off meds)

3. the stress of shook swarming, which must surely be one of the most extreme stresses you can put on your bees, did not predispose them to getting a second dose of EFB

*Other points of interest:*

-hives of 6 frames or more rebounded with incredible speed, drawing out all the bare foundation and laying up multiple frames with brood within a week. I was really shocked at the vigour of the rebound. Note they were fed pollen sub and syrup to help them through this period.

-three of the colonies swarmed within a month-6 weeks of being shook swarmed...I was not really expecting that so early after the shook swarming, so was lax on my inspection schedule. Happily we are left with a bunch of queen cells to raise out in mating nucs....and one hive already has a returned laying queen hard at work.

-most of the larger colonies made a honey crop, which was something I really did not expect. None were very large colonies as the blackberry approached, only two were even close to being strong 10 frame colonies (and were the only ones that got a honey super...the rest filled up a deep given to them as they were due for expansion).

-two or three of the hives should now be split (the ones that swarmed split themselves...). That is also a surprise.

-colonies raising open queen cells during active EFB infection failed to requeen...presumably the EFB also killed the queen larvae

*Takeaways:*

-You can remediate colonies with EFB..._*it is a lot of work and expense*_, but if the infective source is removed, the hives can be cured. If it is early enough in the year you can even aspire to some honey and even some increase.

-shook swarming before the honey flow gave us a lot of well drawn, brand new comb.

-shook swarming before the honey flow seemed to light a fire under the colonies, which boomed with brood and went mad gathering nectar...perhaps something to exploit in years to come?
*
Questions*

-will the EFB incident affect overwintering?

-should we requeen the entire apiary? ( I plan to do a queen run from the best of the queens in two weeks...all to replace the 2018 queens)


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## WesternWilson

squarepeg said:


> I'm still coming up short as far as locating a study in which the survivability of m. plutonius on comb has examined. do you recall where you saw the 2 year time frame mentioned?


Squarepeg, that was mentioned in the UK's National Bee Unit material and the 2year figure is the time EFB can survive in honey, not on bare comb.

I can have all my drawn but empty comb irradiated. But your bleaching and rinsing should be effective. Leaving them to dry, exposed to sunlight (natural UV) should help. 

FWIW I think providing drawn comb is highly overrated! So you may want to ditch what you have and push the bees to draw new in your next nectar flow via the shook swarm method:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct....cfm?id=1075&usg=AOvVaw0BTrwoqRfUbrTmGTZvW_ya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4HtEIoe_rg


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## username00101

The purpose of this post is to correct one of my previous statements, and to also give an (probably final) update.

In one of my previous posts, I indicated no evidence of brood toxicity from terra-pro OTC application. I _believe_ at this point I have in fact seen some evidence of toxicity, the issue is that the symptoms look quite similar to EFB - vertical larva becoming discolored, or larva dis-formed in cells uncapped. Perhaps this is in fact EFB not toxicity - I cannot say without testing again. Bottom line is that I've found the liberal application of terra-pro throughout the entire hive to be extremely effective at reducing EFB, but it does appear that toxicity can occur. Unfortunately, the toxicity to OTC looks similar to EFB - so perhaps I was seeing false-positive EFB for the last week (or it was a combination of both).


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## WesternWilson

username00101 said:


> The purpose of this post is to correct one of my previous statements, and to also give an (probably final) update.
> 
> In one of my previous posts, I indicated no evidence of brood toxicity from terra-pro OTC application. I _believe_ at this point I have in fact seen some evidence of toxicity, the issue is that the symptoms look quite similar to EFB - vertical larva becoming discolored, or larva dis-formed in cells uncapped. Perhaps this is in fact EFB not toxicity - I cannot say without testing again. Bottom line is that I've found the liberal application of terra-pro throughout the entire hive to be extremely effective at reducing EFB, but it does appear that toxicity can occur. Unfortunately, the toxicity to OTC looks similar to EFB - so perhaps I was seeing false-positive EFB for the last week (or it was a combination of both).


That is exactly why using the Vita Life test kits is so important. Then you know what you are dealing with. 

I too have seen a few hinky larvae after treatment with OTC...but that is rare. Maybe one hive in 20. The larvae are not actually quite typical of EFB affected larvae, it looks more like early sacbrood. But...it passes quickly. EFB/AFB gets increasingly worse.


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## squarepeg

cornell's beekeeper tech team has this in their 2019 spring report:

"European Foulbrood (EFB) prevalence was the highest it has been since the Tech Team program began. This past spring, they identified the disease in 26 colonies (10.4%) across 13 operations. In the prior two years, the Tech Team found EFB in less than 5% of colonies."

this despite varroa levels being found to be generally "well-managed".

from:

https://pollinator.cals.cornell.edu...ments/2019 Spring Honey Bee Health Report.pdf


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## Cloverdale

Being a NYS beekeeper and being an involuntarily registered beekeeper due to an AFB outbreak in 2016, AND attending N.Y. Bee Wellness Workshop with Randy O. at Cornell which you have to register for etc., I wish the State would share the Tech Team reports with us. Also, the report doesn’t specifically say nosema cerana or nosema apis; I am told that n. cerana is the most prevalent now, but you cannot treat for n. cerana, only n. apis. :s


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## wildbranch2007

squarepeg said:


> cornell's beekeeper tech team has this in their 2019 spring report:
> 
> "European Foulbrood (EFB) prevalence was the highest it has been since the Tech Team program began. This past spring, they identified the disease in 26 colonies (10.4%) across 13 operations. In the prior two years, the Tech Team found EFB in less than 5% of colonies."


I read this a while back, I had several questions then but no way to get answers. #1 the tech team only checks beeks that have over $1000 in sales, so pretty much eliminates any novice. #2. last I read they are only checking one hive per person inspected. #3. it would help if they said if they inspected the same hive the year before?? so if they are inspecting the same hives as the year b/4, are they taking the proper precautions between apiaries to prevent transfer between beeks??? since the state found afb and efb in my county and the surrounding counties a little more information from either would be helpful. One beek sent in a foil request to find out the towns that were affected, haven't heard any information back from him. The temp. new head of bee inspectors seems to have some good ideas, I have seen a copy of a letter she sent out, where the state will pay for beeks from a club to be trained to identify afb and efb, sent it to my clubs president, she is investigating. The number of people the tech team is finding with efb, seems far higher than beeks are seeing locally, the only one I have heard about, the hive was destroyed.


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## WesternWilson

The problem with inspections and foulbrood is: if the bees have been medicated with oxytetracycline then symptoms are suppressed, the colonies LOOK healthy, and that is that. Unless you take samples back to the lab and test for ambient levels of the bacteria, which is possible but very high tech, you have no idea how much foulbrood is out there. 

The high levels found this year, in the wake of oxytet becoming a prescription-only drug, are not surprising. It seems at least some of the larger operators failed to secure ongoing supplies of oxytet (OTC) and are seeing an issue with the ambient levels blooming. Since EFB remains infective in honey up to two years, and AFB remains in comb etc. as a durable, practically immortal spore, it is not surprising to see the foulbrood rates climb. Unfortunately I fear this will cause us some heartache in terms of spread, particularly if the bees go on the road.

We are telling our club members to put robbing screens on when mobile bees are around (prevents infection via drift), and have created both information sheets and a club presentation to educate members in identification, diagnosis (the club is keeping a supply of Vita Life test kits on hand once they are back on the shelves...AFB is available again and EFB will be soon), treatment and prevention options.

We should all ask our local representatives to reinstate state funding for apiculture departments, including an effective inspection force. 

Meanwhile, be vigilant, learn the shook swarm method, and educate.


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## msl

> The problem with inspections and foulbrood is: if the bees have been medicated with oxytetracycline then symptoms are suppressed, the colonies LOOK healthy, and that is that. Unless you take samples back to the lab and test for ambient levels of the bacteria, which is possible but very high tech, you have no idea how much foulbrood is out there.


The scary thing is the same can be said about resistant stocks, I ran in to issues this year with colony's that were nonsysimotomtic but all queen cells would fail with efb, efb would show up in drone larva from the laying workers


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## Juhani Lunden

msl said:


> The scary thing is the same can be said about resistant stocks, I ran in to issues this year with colony's that were nonsysimotomtic but all queen cells would fail with efb, efb would show up in drone larva from the laying workers


nonsysimotomtic= ?


Google did not find anything.


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## msl

non symptomatic

asymptomatic would have a better work choice


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## squarepeg

msl said:


> The scary thing is the same can be said about resistant stocks, I ran in to issues this year with colony's that were nonsysimotomtic but all queen cells would fail with efb, efb would show up in drone larva from the laying workers


were these diseased queen and drone larvae tested for efb?

how many/what percentage of your colonies did this show up in?


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## username00101

Interesting.

After the outbreak a month or so ago, I am still occasionally noticing dead queen cells with dead scale inside, or just a dead queen inside.

Is that EFB or is it just normal to have a couple of queen cells die from some unknown cause?


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## Cloverdale

username00101 said:


> Interesting.
> 
> After the outbreak a month or so ago, I am still occasionally noticing dead queen cells with dead scale inside, or just a dead queen inside.
> 
> Is that EFB or is it just normal to have a couple of queen cells die from some unknown cause?


The timing of the dead QC could be you inspected just after a new queen emerged and she killed the other queens in their cells before the workers had a chance to clean up.


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## msl

SP one yard... one full sized hive one over wintered (daughter)nuc and the splits that came form them. 2 outher nucs didn't over winter, starved. they built up very slow last year, but saw no brood issues
this yard had been clean, no bees or used equipemnt in sence 2016. 

mother hive was moved in to my horzontal cloak system, split left behind to requeen its self, it failed no less then 3 times being given eggs/larve.

over wintered nuc grew like mad to full sized, did a fly back split and it failed to requeen 3 times. The QR side grew like gang bustersC, and then all of a sudden crashed with efb... fine shape one day, come back 10 days later and its a wreck, way more agressive than Ihad seen before, guessing the feild force aged out and caused stress. 

the cellbuilder lost 4+ batches... looked to be some BQCV mixed in and looks like theincubator started cooking cells so it was a bit of trouble shooting before I got it nailed down as to WTF was going on 
Before the nuc split broke out and i saw issues in the layeing worked brood I had put it up on Bee l, I got some private emails form people in the know that they had see the same thing with AFB.... no sign in the hive, but QCs weren't makeing it

long and short No ropeing, the vita test for efb failed conroal, milk test negative, OTC cleaned it up looked like EFB to me... sadly I am famular with it


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## WesternWilson

EFB should show up in worker brood too...did you use a test kit on the drone brood?


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## squarepeg

msl said:


> long and short No ropeing, the vita test for efb failed conroal, milk test negative, OTC cleaned it up looked like EFB to me... sadly I am famular with it


if i recall bromenshenk stated on bee-l that the vita test was 99.9% accurate. are you saying your experienced observation is better than that or are you making a diagnosis based on 'exclusion' of other causes? when you saw efb before did you have lab confirmation that is what you were seeing?

i ask because we are aware of a least a couple of efb look alikes. in my view the discussion is getting muddied by reports of varying experiences with supposed 'efb' that hasn't been properly identified.

i sincerely hope you don't see this problem anymore msl, but if you do consider sending samples to beltsville. the postage is probably less expensive than a vita test kit.


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## msl

If AFB and mites have been ruled out and it looks like EFB and reacts to OTC like EFB... I don't feel the need to dig much further. 
I have a stash of the bad queen cells to send to beltsville, but when OTC cleared things up I kinda forgot about them. 

Sady I will see this again. Saw it in 2 mateing nucs 2017 and burned them, 2018 it was all over the yard OTC was too little to late lost 20 of 26 overwinter. 2019 2 of the 6 showed systoms, nothing built up. I didn't start catching queens till july, instead of may...
I have a TF type( just a lazy beekeeper, not a true believer) right next to my main yard, been fighting his mitebombs for years. peak of fall dearth last year he spread combs form dead outs out on the ground for bees to rob out.... 
nope he has never seen EFB in his hives.....he is 50' from me, what are the odds? 

There also seems to be a huge up tic in EFB in the area. and I am finding people realy don't know what they are looking at.. Our club yard got hit, started with a swarm the was brought in, I found it, plenty of people had looked at the hive before me...just didn't see it..
We took the opertuinty to buy disposabul gloves and brought people in to see what EFB looks like first hand... several said..."hey, I think I am seening this in my hives"... and a test kit later it showed they were.

edit WW no worker brood, drone brood from laying works after they repeatably filed to re queen


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## crofter

At the initial stages when the nurse bees are in full force and cleaning out the infected larvae as soon as they identify it, I think you would not see the discolored, misshapen larvae that are so visible at the later stages when the nurse bees are fighting a losing battle. Perhaps the secondary bacteria that cause the odor also have not proliferated yet, either. I certainly missed the onset of it and so did a bee inspector!

I cannot speak to the queen connection but am inclined to believe their larval stage would be susceptable. I dont think queen replacement would be an automatic cure either but a brood break would be of some significance but hardly a cure in itself when brood rearing has been so compromised for any length of time. Kind of like putting the leeches on a starving man!

I am surprised that the significance of Oldtimers post has not been more of an "ah ha!" suggestion. For whatever reason, there seems to be a discrepancy in people experience with the syndrome that is at least loosely attributed to _melissococcus plutons. _


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## squarepeg

wow. it sounds like efb may be highly endemic there msl.

you can bet your neighbor's hives are infected if only 50' away.

has your state bee inspector gotten involved?


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## msl

Sadly no inspectors here, and if there were not sure they could keep up, thousands of backyard beekeepers 



> At the initial stages when the nurse bees are in full force and cleaning out the infected larvae as soon as they identify it, I think you would not see the discolored, misshapen larvae that are so visible at the later stages when the nurse bees are fighting a losing battle


I have seen this, brood pattern gets a bit spoty, but no sick larva. but what makes this instresting was a sold brood pattern and build up, this was a hive I had picked out as a breeder. On the cell builder, before OTC I shook off and inspected every comb, Still had a good brood pattern, I fould just 3 off larve, but they looked more sack brood than anything 

there is a lot of stuff out there that sujests infections with out sysmtons 
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00248-004-0188-2
Distribution of Melissococcus plutonius in Honeybee Colonies with and without Symptoms of European Foulbrood 


> Larvae from brood samples with and without clinical signs of disease (n = 92) and honey (n = 92) from the same colonies were investigated. Individual larvae (n = 60) and pupae (n = 30) from diseased brood in single colonies were also investigated to study the distribution of the bactersium within the brood between larvae. M. plutonius was detected in larvae in all apiaries where symptoms of EFB could be seen, but not in all colonies judged as cases of EFB in the field, when healthy-looking larvae from such colonies were tested. The occurrence of the bacterium within the brood was not limited to larvae with symptoms only


In breeding super bees tabor notes that hives that outher wise look fine may be infected and he starts treating with OTC when he gets sub 90% cell acceptance.


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## Gypsi

What I did, to be sure my other hives did not rob the infected ones, was harvest all honey for human use only, melt down all wax, scorch all woodware. Terra-pro was easy to get in 2013, and feed sugar water while they had that and redid their hive, thus expelling the remaining bactera. Same reason we put fresh swarms on sugar water and foundation, so they'll get rid of anything they are carrying.

Any hive that robbed yours will also need treated.


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## username00101

Found these photos on another forum, good example of


European foulbrood


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## Juhani Lunden

username00101 said:


> Found these photos on another forum, good example of
> 
> 
> European foulbrood


Looks familiar.  Sometimes even holes in cells, but no roping.

I had several hives with brood disease symptoms in spring. Now nothing. This is very typical for my EFB (or whatever). 

I have shaken one big hive to cleaner looking combs, not foundations because I did not have any available at that moment. The queen has been changed and they have been reinforced with brood frames from other hives. Now looking good. 

One Mini-Plus hive had the most serious looking infection, and smell, I did nothing in spring. Killed the queen in June when I had ripe cells to give instead. After the new queen started they were getting along, but not expanding, and therefore one week ago I took actions: I put the queen with one egg frame downstairs (other frames extracted and empty) under the excluder, the rest of the frames and bees were left above excluder. I can send some pictures of the brood area later. The idea was to give cleaner combs, as it did not get any better by itself there must be pretty intense infection in the combs. After queen change there has been no smell anymore. 

No medication what so ever, no washing equipment. This has been my policy for 30 years.


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## Juhani Lunden

Juhani Lunden said:


> I can send some pictures of the brood area later.


The EFB infected Mini-Plus nuc is stronger now than the rest of them, and it is because I did not divide it for queen rearing purposes.


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## squarepeg

if you are experiencing true efb juhani (your cases are not confirmed with lab testing if i recall correctly), then you have a much less virulent strain than what i experienced here.

so few brood survived to the capping stage such that the populations quickly dwindled to just a handful of bees with no chance of recovery.


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> if you are experiencing true efb juhani (your cases are not confirmed with lab testing if i recall correctly), then you have a much less virulent strain than what i experienced here.
> 
> so few brood survived to the capping stage such that the populations quickly dwindled to just a handful of bees with no chance of recovery.


You are right, I have only couple of times sended samples of AFB, they were negative. One time when an beekeeping veterinary made the test he also examined EFB, and found heaps of it. So much that he insisted that I have to have clinical symptoms, which I did´t, at that time many years ago.


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## Juhani Lunden

Juhani Lunden said:


> .
> 
> One Mini-Plus hive had the most serious looking infection, and smell, I did nothing in spring. Killed the queen in June when I had *ripe cell*s to give instead.


Now that queen from the cell was lying dead in front of the hive, checked what is going on, and yep, they made a new one.
This was a reaction to the disease?


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## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> This was a reaction to the disease?


perhaps.

"Surviving larvae will become adults with generally lower weight and delayed pupation when compared to their uninfected counterparts..."

from: https://bee-health.extension.org/european-foulbrood:-a-bacterial-disease-affecting-honey-bee-brood/


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> perhaps.
> 
> "Surviving larvae will become adults with generally lower weight and delayed pupation when compared to their uninfected counterparts..."
> 
> from: https://bee-health.extension.org/european-foulbrood:-a-bacterial-disease-affecting-honey-bee-brood/


But remember it was a ripe cell I gave them, from a healthy hive. And the dead queen was normal size, in fact bigger than average,


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## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> But remember it was a ripe cell I gave them, from a healthy hive...


ah, you are correct.

just a guess here, but since efb is a gut microbe that competes for food, (similar to nosema), and if efb contaminated food is being fed to the queen, (whose nutritional requirements are high during egg laying), then perhaps the queen could become malnourished because of that competition for food.

another guess would be that if a high percentage of worker brood was not making it to the capping stage, the colony might interpret that as a problem with the queen and attempt to replace her.


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## WesternWilson

I agree, stop moving bees. But that info on rates in the UK was all about how shook swarming was the method they used until OTC came along. Once they went to OTC only they found rates of EFB started climbing (because OTC suppresses symptoms but the honey and stores are still contaminated and reinfect the colony once meds are stopped). Seeing that trend, shook swarming was again adopted as an effective method of preventing enduring pools of infection. While the presentation did not go into detail, where OTC is still effective, a combination approach of shook swarming AND OTC would give best results. Alas now we are seeing OTC-resistant foulbroods. Hoping those foulbrood vaccine researchers get busy!


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## Gypsi

My state bee inspector confirmed my EFB diagnosis, sent a sample off for testing, yes, it was, told me to requeen, mediicate and all would be well. My local mentor said, harvest the honey, melt the wax, torch inside of boxes, and burn or bleach frames.

I did my hives, my nearest neighbor whose hive was robbing mine, and no more EFB. I didn't requeen, my last 2 or 3 queens by the time I discovered what the problem was, were fine. All honey was served to humans who liked it very much. Wax became furniture polish. The bees ate sugar syrup which did not have bacteria in it, and built comb thus flushing their stomachs. I have no idea if the antibiotic did anything


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## WesternWilson

Gypsi said:


> My state bee inspector confirmed my EFB diagnosis, sent a sample off for testing, yes, it was, told me to requeen, mediicate and all would be well. My local mentor said, harvest the honey, melt the wax, torch inside of boxes, and burn or bleach frames.
> 
> I have no idea if the antibiotic did anything


Gypsi, glad your local mentor gave you better advice! More, attached. It bears repeating: foulbrood does NOT "go away" in a flow, or when "stress" lets up. If a flow fixes things, likely your bees were just starving.

FWIW you'll know the antibiotic worked if, when you dose them, the new brood stays clear and clean. When oxytet is applied to the colony, all symptoms in new brood are suppressed and everything looks fine. It is easy to think...yay! I beat this thing! But alas you will likely experience re-bloom of foulbrood because it is resident in the stores and comb.


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## Gypsi

I was in a dearth, but I wasn't taking any chances. EFB started months before I realized it, robbing spread it, I had gone from 6 hives to 2 hives before identifying the problem, and I did EVERYTHING. And Everything works, including the oxytet. That was spring of 2013 and I haven't seen EFB since and I didn't move.


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## WesternWilson

Gypsi, in Texas are you contending as well with Africanized bees and Small Hive Beetle??


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## Gypsi

Well requeening does pretty well at keeping African DNA down to a dull roar, but yes we have Small Hive Beetle to go with AHB. It is a challenging place for beekeeping, but aren't they all in different ways?


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