# Foul Brood



## brownbuff75 (Jul 1, 2013)

I know that feeding honey with unknown origins is risky because it might have foul brood spores or other diseases in it, which in turn can infect your hive. So please don't respond to this post with "not worth it", "too dangerous" or the like. Does anyone know of a study done that they have diluted the honey with a bleach solution in order to kill the potential spores? If so what was that ratio? I have looked and the closest I can find is one telling me a solution to sanitize wooden ware with, but nothing on the actual honey/feed.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

No.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Dunno about EFB, but for AFB, Irradiation or fire are the only things that will deal with those spores.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

EFB; 
https://books.google.com/books?hl=e...epage&q=european foulbrood resistance&f=false

AFB; Nothing specifically about bleach, but Dr White did test some other chemicals, none of which completely worked. But he did find that at temperature for a duration was enough to keep the hives from getting the disease. 

https://archive.org/details/americanfoulbroo809whit

Do you have AFB honey? Or unknown honey?


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## brownbuff75 (Jul 1, 2013)

My father has some unknown honey in a metal can that he was trying to get rid of. The cans are not in sellable condition and with the amount of rust on them I would be afraid of consuming the honey in them


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Although it's tempting, I would not risk it.

I am speaking as someone who spent the afternoon scraping frames and boxes in preparation for taking them down to be irradiated next week since I had an outbreak of EFB. (Not from using unknown honey, though.) The whole process will cost me about $1000 to clean up about $3000 worth of stuff. And I spent the whole of last summer struggling with sick hives, with my yard in quarantine and my bees needing to be treated with antibiotics. And I have lost colonies as a result. And I expect to have still have some issues with it again this summer, though hopefully much smaller, and more contained, but I can't tell, yet what will happen. And having EFB in my yard has really been hard to bear; it has been thoroughly depressing and discouraging.

You may be thinking of the money you'd save instead of buying sugar. Or you may be thinking it's very sad to waste the work product of all those unknown bees. But given my own recent experience I would buy sugar in tiny little restaurant packages before I'd take any kind of FB risk in the future. And I have scraped off hundreds of combs (some with remnants of honey in them) into the garbage can, so I have gotten used to "wasting" my bees work products.

To your main question, though, about what concentration of bleach would sanitize the honey: whatever it would be, would likely be lethal to the bees.

You do know that one of the only economic mitigations in the case of an American foul brood outbreak in your operation is to extract the honey and sell it into the human-food market, prior to killing the bees and burning the hives and combs. Foul brood causes no human illness so that would be a "safe", though arguably unethical, way to salvage some economic value from a disaster.

Despite the rust on the cans the honey might be safe to eat, although honey can carry bolutism spores (that's why it should never be eaten by infants) and corroded food cans are a sign of potential botulism contamination for home-canned food. 

Nancy


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## propet12 (Jun 17, 2009)

As already stated, your only option is irradiation.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

It's not worth it to feed your bees anything questionable. Keeping your apiary clean is hard enough work without introducing another unknown in my opinion. 

Nancy, I am also dealing with the news of EFB being in my hives. I've been reading all I can to find out how to deal with this. I've read about the sterilization of frames through a steam method and following that up with boiling solution of water and washing soda. See link below:

www.nationalbeeunit.com/downloadDocument.cfm?id=423

My main dilemma is what to do with the bees. I'm not sure it's worth saving them - though I've spent 4 years pampering them and loving the experience, I wonder if it is wiser to eliminate these bees (5 hives worth) and starting over again next spring.

It is indeed depressing and discouraging.


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## propet12 (Jun 17, 2009)

In my opinion:

I definitely would not destroy hives infected with European foul brood. Remove infected brood frames and replace with new foundation, and feed. If you have access to it, use one treatment of Terramycin. 

Or, shake all the bees in front of the entrance of all new or disinfected hive equipment and feed. Soaking in lye water (1 lb lye to 10 gallons water (add lye to water)) or even bleach water will work to clean up infected equipment. Make sure you're on a flow before using the latter method for best results.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

@Cadence:

Has the EFB been confirmed by lab test or one of VITA field test? 

You can treat a colony with Oxy-tet. I would treat all of them in the same yard.

And I would integrate the treating with a shook swarm on to clean equipment (maybe even a double shook swarm, but that's probably excessive.)

I wouldn't kill the bees for EFB. Some people like to requeen. I have no settled opinion on that. I did not.

I wasted a lot of time hoping they would recover on the flow. If it reoccurs this year (and I expect it may that's the natural history of it in a yard, a couple of years until it burns it self out), I will treat and do shook swarms immediately.

Irradiation at 15 KGys will kill the bacteria that causes EFB. This is higher than what's needed for AFB, which surprised me.

Time is also a factor in cleaning up EFB equipment. I have read that 18 months' storage (carefully away from the bees) will reduce the bacterial load sufficiently.

In order to treat you will need a vet's prescription for the drug. It is not at all hard to apply. If you decide to go that route I can offer some tips. I saw an almost immediate response, i.e. between the first and second of the four doses, just four days apart. All but one of my colonies recovered.

I haven't read the link, but I will do so now. I just wanted to respond right away with some encouragement. EFB totally takes the fun out of beekeeping, and you are going to have some significant expenses for extra equipment in the short run. But it is not the same as dealing with AFB. (Though many people seem to confabulate the two diseases.) 

If you have some apparently uninfected colonies in a yard with infected colonies, immediately put in place stringent isolation techniques as far as tools, gloves, and of course equipment, and particularly any frames. Take extra care to not allow any infected colony to swarm, preemptively splitting them, if needed. Swarms can take EFB with them and you don't want a feral colony establishing a reservoir of it to keep re-infecting your own bees. If you have to split a sick colony, you can recombine it, again later. Just don't let them swarm.

Off to read your link.

ETA: Unfortunately the link won't open for me, so I can't read it. One thing I do know though is that there is "steam" and there are "steamers" the kind sold for household use in cleaning, fabric care, or even wall-paper and paint removing. And the later categories of machines are midgets compared to the steam generators intended for sterilization. (And I happen to own one of the powerful steamers used for quasi-industrial purposes, and even it doesn't create enough volume and sustainable temp of steam to _sterilize_ anything.)

There is no reason to kill your bees.

Nancy


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

I have read about the shook swarm method combined with the Terra treatment at the same time. If I have 5 hives, I would need to do the shook method on all of them at the same time, and treat at the same time. I can work on new frames for the hives, but I don't have the time or resources to obtain 5 new hive bodies. I am so close to throwing in the towel with my existing bees but the encouragement is lifting my hopes. 

I had the state bee inspector come out. I had a massive die off of my foragers on all hives. It was a big event like poisoning - which I cannot pinpoint where that could come from. Live in the country, but have 2 new large land owners (30 acres +/-) neighbors who are trying to make pasture out of woodland. So I don't know if they sprayed or not. State inspector said it could be from the Carolina Jessamine which was extremely prolific in our area this year and due to the weather may have been the only nectar/pollen source available. He tested for both AFB and EFB. Positive EFB on two hives, so I'm treating them all as positive.

My plan was to steam all wax off the frames and put in new foundation. But I'd always have to have one hive clean to do a shake method and treat as I move down the line. Extreme amount of work and time required. But I guess if I could clean up one hive (1) I would shake bees from hive 2 into it, then clean up hive 2 and shake bees from hive 3 into it, etc. And treat. I have some Terra my bee instructor told us to buy when I took classes 4 years ago. Been stored in fridge. 

What is a double shook method?


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Cadence,

Massive bee die-off is not a symptom of EFB. How does your brood pattern look? 

OK, I jammed that document around so I could sort of read it. Several things:

1) Most of the info about cleaning methods, if read carefully, notes it does not apply to the foul brood diseases.

2) And they say irradiation of 25Kilo Grays is needed for foul brood. That is not consistent with other studies I have read.

3) When they are talking about washing soda and steaming, they are not describing treatments for EFB.

4) Virkon is noted as an effected sterilizing solution for EFB, but not for AFB. I am not sure how it works with bees, yet.

Taking AFB off the table (as not your, or my, problem), it's important not to take advice meant for cleaning up equipment exposed to other diseases. Because while thprocesses se will take a lot of work, if they don't fix the EFB problem then it's work, time, money, etc., wasted.

You can treat without shook swarming. Technically you can't treat, even with old product without a vet's prescription. But that wouldn't trouble me, at all. There is a 4 week blackout after treating before you can install any honey supers, and of course any honey collected during treatment can never be used for human consumption. It takes about two weeks to complete a treatment cycle, so there is six weeks of no honey collection. 

Shook swarming takes a full set of equipment, base, box, top, inner cover, and undrawn frames. And then you have to have equipment for expansion as they recover, so whatever size stacks you normally have you'll need 2 times that. And the "home remedies" for cleaning up EFB equipment in the short run are not great. Though the reference in the link you posted to Virkon is interesting. I'll be following up on that. Scorching is reputed to work. Some bleaching may work. and as I noted time works, but the time is 18 months.

You may wish to look into gamma irradiation, though it's not as simple or as inexpensive as it sounds. There is a facility in FL. You may be able to get a group thing going. I can make further suggestions about that, if you'd like.

If you killed the bees, you'd still have the clean-up issue. What is your typical stack size?

Double shook swarms work like this: Shake bees off on to clean equipment, with no food, so they have to use up what's in their crops (that's where the EFB bacteria is) as they start to draw new wax. After three days, shake them again onto another set of fresh equipment, then treat and feed. The second set of equipment is the start of their new permanent home. The first set of equipment (frames) is scraped, sanitized, or discarded since it would have the residue of the EFB bacteria on it. I think a quick soak and rinse in Chlorox would clean the box and base up and then you could do the next one with the same interim (first box) set-up.

A single shook swarm is just that: shake them on to clean equipment which is their new permanent home. The downside is that they will take a small amount of EFB bacteria with them in their crops into their new home, with no interim stage to leave it all finally behind.

Since this wasn't obvious to me, at first, this means you will be abandoning whatever brood is in the colony at the time of the shook swarm. I would freeze the brood frames to kill them, before scraping the combs into the trash. The brood combs are highly contaminated with EFB bacteria, so I wouldn't bother saving any of them. 

But you will still have to deal with equipment that the bees are in now. (Equipment that hasn't, yet, been on the hives for the year is a question mark. EFB can persist from year to year at a low level. it would be a shame to do shook swarms and then top them off with supers that had EFB from last year.)

I was appalled at the expense of dealing with EFB. I didn't bite the bullet, at first, and do shook swarms. I wish, in retrospect, that I had done so, as in the end I think I wound up with even more contaminated gear that has to be abandoned or dealt with. I am still struggling with that issue. I had made plans to have my gear irradiated earlier this year, then at the last minute I discovered that the expected dose might not be high enough to deal with EFB, so I dropped out. But I still have a mountain of dirty gear. And not much clean gear to shake them into, if they get sick again. And I am just about to be able to open my hives for the first time and see what I've got for brood. (It's been too cold up here for that until, possibly, this weekend.) I have a month before I could do shook swarms, but my deadline is approaching: buying a third complete set of gear or finding some alternative.

ETA: I need to go away from my computer for a few hours. But I'll be back this evening. I will, in the meantime, try to find out about Virkon (which is readily available from veterinarian supply places) and any residual toxicity for bees. 

The one thing to remember: this is not an emergency. Though I would take great pains to make sure any colony weakened by EFB can not be robbed. That's a prime vector for the spread (and probably how your bees got it in the first place, when they were the strong robbers.) So applying robbing screens would seem urgent, to me, even if there are no signs of robbing, yet.

Nancy


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

Right, the massive die off of foragers was not a result of EFB. As I said it was another event that caused that. After that came the issue with EFB. Hives looked very strong coming out of winter. Document hive strength weekly with use of a FLIR. 

Brood is spotty now. And yes, no matter the fate of the bees, the equipment still needs to be dealt with.

I read a little on Virkon, seems like something preppers would keep 55 gallon drums of in their stockpile...(kidding).

This has certainly taken the wind out of my sails.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

I am very sorry to hear all of that Cadence. Did Randy or John have any recommendations on how to clean up the equipment when they got the positive diagnoses?


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

No Patrick, Randy did not give me any cleanup advice. Guess I'll have to give him another call back.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

The degree of difficulty to reasonably isolate one hive from another, including clothes, shoes, tools, scrapings from equipment clean up etc., is almost overwhelming. The thought of having to scrap two sets of foundation and rescrape and rescortch the woodenware plus lye washing the frames for a double shakedown would be very expensive and time consuming. If you dont know where it came from and no guarantee of re appearing............. hmmmm!


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

@Cadence,

EFB does take the wind out of your sails. I often felt quite desperate about it last summer. It was hard to summon much enthusiasm and I had to really push myself to keep going. The intensive isolation effort needed to keep it from spreading to the apparently healthy colonies takes the fun out of working them, too. 

And I still feel a sense of being in a quite different bee-experience than before I had it in my yard, and even from other beekeepers' experiences. What's OK for them, even routine practice, is now something I either can't do (more brood frames from hive to hive, as an example) or won't do (catch swarms.) 

I just spent a cold, frustrating, afternoon trying to sort out my gear in preparation for another attempt at having it irradiated. It is not an easy, nor inexpensive, thing to do, even though it appears to be reasonably satisfactory as far as eliminating the bacteria from the equipment. I'll be paying about $1,500 for the treatment, though it will cover about $4K worth of gear if I had to replace it, so it's cost effective on that score. I have already spent a few thousand on the new gear I moved the bees into last summer. And they might need to be moved again, _this summer_. (And even again in the summer after that.) My husband and I go back and forth on whether to go ahead with this, as I may not need $4k worth of replacements this year, and maybe it would be cheaper to just buy what I need new, if and when I need it. It might even cost less than $1500. And I could just wait out the 18 month quarantine on the rest of my gear. By the spring of 2020 all of the stuff will have been off the hives long enough. (It would be clear 6 months before that, but there's nothing you can do with hive equipment up here in NY in the winter, so functionally it's two years from now.)

I re-read the BeeUnit info in the link and it seems pretty clear to me that the scrape, steam, washing soda protocol is not effective for EFB. So I am spared figuring out how to boil my equipment! Parafining the equipment is another option, but the only person up here who has the equipment to do that won't do anything except brand new equipment. Understandably, since this is a service he charges for, he doesn't want to risk any claim from his customers that they got EFB from his operation. I certainly don't blame him for putting a limit on what gear he wants in his vats.

When you look at the brood frames, do you see the larvae with the typical EFB posture and discoloration? Something beekeepers call snotty brood looks a lot like it, and often clears up on its own. With the new Vita field tests (I assume that's the bee inspector used?) it may turn out that "snotty brood", is in fact a low level EFB event. And that tells you something about the nature of some EFB infections: that they are transient, perhaps even self-correcting enough, and more importantly, so ubiquitous that everybody has some level of EFB in their yard. Which raises the question of why are we going to so much trouble to clean the gear? Indeed, I was surprised by the recommendation to simply treat or treat + shook swarm (the method with the best track record as far as re-ocurrences the following year) and _carry on without equipment sterilization_. And yet, if that's the case, perhaps one of the reasons for the persistence of the problem from year to year is that the gear isn't usually rendered effectively sterilized, so of course re-infections occur. Having struggled through one year of it, I am highly motivated to do everything I can to prevent multi-year transmissions if I can possibly help that. Yet, that brings me back to the difficulty and expense of getting contaminated gear truly clean or buying new. 

If you only have two colonies affected, I think I would just buy (or make) some basic replacement gear:

Simple bases from plywood, three new boxes (one for each sick colony and a third one to act as the temp home when doing the double shook swarm thing, and three basic plywood, migratory style tops. Frames are tricky. I think may be a set of plastic ones for the interim shook-swarm box, and then a fresh set of whatever you usually use for each colony in their new permanent homes. This would allow you to get a start on treating and shook-swarming ASAP, before the problem spreads further.

Once the bees are out of their EFB-equipment, you could try scorching the boxes and maybe a Virkon scrub down afterward. I would simply cut out and discard (burn or discard as trash in closed in sealed containers where no bees could ever find it) the combs the bees are on now- this is the location of most of the contagious material in the colony. If you use plastic, I would use Virkon on it, or a very strong bath of Chlorox. Wood would be trickier, but scrape it clean and give it a good Choloroxing may be be enough. And you could set them aside for 18 months before reusing them. That's not a really high expense, just for the frames alone. 

After your permanent bases and tops and the existing boxes are processed (scorched, and sanitized - chlorine or Virkon -and rinsed and dried), you could reunite them with their bees in their new boxes, and thus carry on.

So your immediate costs would be two sets of new frames, and a spare set of plastic frames (easiest to clean up between colonies after the interim shook-swarm and afterward I think). Three boxes and the construction of three sets of temp bases and migratory tops from plywood. (And these, in turn, could be cleaned up and kept for use if you have another round, next year.) This would buy you time to work through the original gear and get it cleaned up. Your bees aren't going to be setting any records for honey collecting as their populations will be down until they recover. So you would have some time to work on the old gear.

Meanwhile, here's the method I learned to clean hive tools between colonies: using Comet powder WITH BLEACH and a stainless steel scrubbie, remove all the wax and propolis from the tool. Then rinse in hot water. Then immerse in a bath of rubbing alcohol for 15 minutes. I bought extra hive tools so I could keep working while the first ones were soaking. I used nitrile gloves so I could just take them off between colonies. I also soaked things like my queen marking circle in alcohol between hives. It was a PITA, but I successfully contained the infection to only the original colonies it was discovered in. I will know by the weekend if that still holds true, as that's the first time since last fall that I will get a chance to see any frames of brood. 

Nancy


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

I'd like to call your attention to a few things, full well knowing you've heard them before:

it's a stress related infection, treatable with terramycin 3x 5 days apart + 
shaking the colony onto clean comb + requeening + feeding syrup (if not on a good flow).


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

clyderoad said:


> I'd like to call your attention to a few things, full well knowing you've heard them before:
> 
> it's a stress related infection, treatable with terramycin 3x 5 days apart +
> shaking the colony onto clean comb + requeening + feeding syrup (if not on a good flow).


I was wondering if you had first hand experience use that method? My bees got AFB last year and I used fire to get rid of it.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

I'd like to thank everyone for their experience, insight and advice. 

I haven't read any where else about the 18 month period of isolation for the equipment to stop the spread. Where did you find that? I have not heard back from our state inspector about equipment clean up. He took samples and they run the tests up in Boaz, Al., then send it off to Beltsville for confirmation. He did not run any tests at the apiary.

I have 7 hives (double deeps) that should be sterilized, not 2. He only took samples from 2 hives, though all 6 show the same signs. Some of the larvae look healthy and some look pretty bad.

There was definitely a lot of stress when all my foragers starting dying. Each hive lost most all adult foragers.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

What is your goal? Adding bleach, even if it would kill AFB spores, which I do not believe it will, is going to disrupt the microbes in their gut. The main advantage to feeding honey rather than syrup would be to not disrupt the microbes in their gut. So it seems to me you have undone any advantage that honey has. Syrup may not be as good as nectar or honey, but it's really not bad. Syrup is always better than bees starving.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Cadence; would the loss of foragers be from normal life span limits and not being replaced due to the EFB decimating new brood success rate?

I wish that I had been saving links to seemingly interesting research and experience I have come across while looking into European Foulbrood. I had gathered the impression that one of the most long term hiding place was in the bee bread/pollen stores in old cells; the figure of a year and a half has come up fairly often but more recently have read that the thin film on comb surfaces was the source.

Overall, my impression is that there is more emphasis on reducing stresses from all sources rather than understanding the minute detail of the enabling processes of the Melissa coccus Plutons bacteria. My mental process wants to start from knowing why and how! Not so easy to do in this case.

Enjambres seems to have had a fire and smoke disaster as a major stressor; I had a very protracted cold wet spring and summer and most likely should have fed pollen sub and syrup. I definitely should *not* have combined some of the weaker hives 

The apparent symptoms on brood had cleared up by summers end but signs are that I probably have quite high nosema counts this winter and cleansing flights have been few and far between but messy! I will just have to wait and see how they brood up and whether the EFB returns; long term forecast does not show much promise of any foraging weather before the end of April here. Will just have to wait and see, but needless to say that I am not quivering with anticipation!


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Melissacoccus Plutons (EFB) will not survive in honey. It does not produce spores and the living bacteria will die at the pH of honey. Paenibacillus larvae spores (AFB) will survive in honey.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

Nancy, I did find a document online which states "Keep colonies/equipment in quarantine for at least 18 months" . There are other documents talking about an 18 month quarantine for AFB also. That may mean keeping your new bees and new equipment away from your infected apiary for 18 months, but I don't know if that means the bacteria on infected equipment will have died after 18 months.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

AFB spores live forever as far as we know. They have spores that are 3/4 of a century old and they are still viable...


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

@Cadence:

Oh, I am sorry to hear you have seven involved colonies, not just the two that were tested. No wonder you feel troubled.

Crofter is right, before I had EFB I had a fire in my apiary in the winter which resulted in the loss of two colonies outright and likely a certain amount of toxic smoke induced stress for all the rest of them. (Combined with a particularly out-of-synch spring weather roll out last year that kept them cool and short of foraging steady opportunities late into May.)

A useful bit of first-aid you might try is immediately starting some high-quality pollen sub (in small quantities at a time to avoid giving too much encouragement to SHB). Poor, quality, inconsistent, and a shortage of pollen is implicated in the expression of EHB.

The bacteria is likely to be around in many more apiaries than just those with visible symptoms. EFB is a stress-promoted disease, somewhat analogous to how you are more likely to come down with a cold - given the same opportunities for exposure to viruses that cause one - when you also happen to be run-down, not sleeping well, not eating right and worried sick about something.

Usually on a spring flow, nectar and pollen are plentiful so that countervails against the presence of EFB bacteria. How long before you saw the symptoms of EFB, did the bee-kill occur? That might be your pre-disposing stressor, if it took out enough foragers to reduce the incoming pollen supplies.

But you have two problems right now: what to do about the current bees' health, and what, if anything to do about de-contaminating your gear, most efficiently, effectively and at the least unnecessary cost.

Let's deal with the bees, first: treating them with Oxy-tet will immediately begin to stop the symptoms and allow the bees to clear it out of their systems (heartbreakingly, it's the nurse bees who are giving it to their charges when they feed them after having cleaned out the dead larvae and becoming contaminated, but not infected, themselves.)

You can do this with, or without, moving them to clean equipment. Treating and simultaneously moving has a higher degree of long term success in preventing re-infections next spring, but it does not mean you are guaranteed to get a re-occurrence, either, if you don't move them. And while doing both things in tandem is the best, doing them sequentially not a bad plan, either. But simply treating them will stop the disease, right now.

FYI: I treated without shaking, but eventually moved my sick colonies into clean gear (all wooden ware, and some new frames). That's where my mountain of dirty gear came from. This year, however, if I have a re-infection, I will simultaneously shake them and treat them (probably doing the double-shake technique, for good measure.) What I learned from last year was to not put too much time, or energy, into hoping things would get better on their own. They did not, so I will act more assertively from the earliest point this year. 

Also because I waited, I think my bees paid a higher than necessary cost because they were weaker once help (in the form of Oxy-tet) finally arrived, and I lost colonies due to that weakness that might have otherwise survived. I was quite troubled by the propaganda against use of antibiotics. I wish now that I had worked through that much more quickly, as it was a foolish quibble. My bees were sick with a treatable disease, that has an available, known cure. It was absurd to keep them languishing just because I read something on the internet about how reprehensible it is to treat bees with antibiotics. There are no extra points to be gained by letting the animals in one's care suffer unnecessarily in the name of ideological purity. 

I can't remember now whether the 18-month quarantine figure came from here on BeeSource or from something I recently read on Bee-L, but it is relatively new to me. I don't believe I knew that last summer when i was trying to figure out what to do.

So, now about your gear: first, try hard not to add new pieces at the moment. No point adding to the job of cleaning stuff up.

Second, expect your colonies to get smaller, rather than bigger for awhile. Maybe even small enough that living in some kind of jury-rigged nuc-sized boxes might be appropriate for a time. (I think there are some plans here on BS for making sets of nuc boxes from plywood.) This would give you an opportunity to scorch and otherwise try to clean up your regular gear, on at least some hives. Then with a couple of sets of new gear made up, and used for shook swarms, that would allow more equipment sets to be processed through whatever clean-up regimen you decide on. And so on. Then clean up anything they lived in temporarily, and await events.

The main issue, as I see it is the combs: (and frames and foundations). The more you can get those out of circulation, scraped, cleaned, and redrawn the better off you will be in the long run. 

I dithered too much about this thinking of the adage of "beekeeper's gold". I was overlooking that the bees made all of them from scratch, and a healthy colony can make more of them, whereas a colony continually stressed by re-infections won't. I only began to get hard-hearted and cut my losses towards the end of the summer and over the winter. It would have been smarter to do so earlier-on when getting comb drawn is easier. I won't be making that mistake, again. Your prime comb-drawing season is undoubtedly different from mine, probably much earlier. It's not pleasant to scrape off drawn comb but unless you have the ability to irradiate it, it remains an infection risk because unlike hard parts of hive it can't be sterilized by fire, and I am not sure using bleach or Virkon would be good for the wax, anyway. (But I have no problem bleaching, or possibly, Virkon-ing the plastic parts and the wood frames. Haven't researched Virkon enough to know about its honeybee safety profile, yet.)

If you do decide to discard wax and possibly honey and pollen stores, either burn it, bury it, or dispose of it in a way that other bees would never find it and rob it out at a landfill or transfer station.

Do you need suggestions about how to apply the Oxy-tet? Paradoxically it is lethal to open brood, so some extra care should be used when treating an already-sick hive with little viable brood at the time. I worked out a good way to do it, and I even have pictures to go along with it, which I rarely do for anything. 

Let me know what else I can add to help you sort through your options. 

Having EFB in my yard made me feel like the world's worst beekeeper; on a deep, personal level I felt like I had really dropped the ball. It still upsets me, and I recently made an off-hand comment about that on another forum, describing myself as a bad beekeeper. I was surprised because I got a lot of PMs in response, flatly contradicting my statement. So in case, you're feeling that way, as well, let me make it clear: EFB is not your fault. There are really no wrong choices among your options (except maybe completely ignoring it) and it's likely you will get through it, back to a better place. (I can't vouch for that last part, yet, myself but I believe the people who wrote to me and told me of their experiences.) So I'm passing on their kind words of comfort, to you.

Nancy


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Michael Bush is correct, 18 months is not nearly long enough to kill off AFB spores, which like ****roaches will likely outlive our species. 

But we're talking EFB, here. 

@Cadence,

Can you post the link where you read about the 18-month period, perhaps that will jog my memory. I did see a reference to an 18-month quarantine of an apiary after AFB in documents from the UK. But that isn't talking about simply waiting for gear to clean itself, it is describing the period of waiting to prove that all healthy-appearing colonies in a yard that previously had AFB are, and remain, healthy.

Probably I have added to the confusion semantically. The gear isn't "quarantined", it is just set aside and not reused until the EFB bacteria has likely died off, after which it can be safely reused in hives.

Really kicking myself for not collecting the link on this point - does anyone have it?

Nancy


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

There is a whole lot of things I can relate to in Enjambres post #26! There has been some confusion in that some posts assume American Foulbrood where European Foulbrood is being discussed; two entirely different organisms but a fair bit in common. In neither case is the honey compromised for human consumption but it can harbor and transmit the organisms to bees. AFB practically forever as M. Bush says but from my reading the the EFB bacteria can survive for up to seven months in honey in the comb. The range of ph and certain mineral salts that support the EFB is quite narrow. The time till it is no longer an actual infective source for bees may be less; the limits of detectability is now so low that it can skew the significance in many cases.

If a person were to do a double shakedown and the interim comb disposed of anyways, I wonder if that would be a good time to let the bees draw foundationless comb. I think the time frame may only be three or four days. Never paid much attention because I never thought I would be going there.

I suspect that the fairly common practice of doing prophylactic treatment for american foulbrood using oxytet has kept down the experience with european foulbrood. I have read some suggestion that the appearance of european foulbrood is on the rise.

Username "flowerplanter" has quite a collection of material concerning european foulbrood.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Dan the bee guy said:


> I was wondering if you had first hand experience use that method? My bees got AFB last year and I used fire to get rid of it.


Of course not Dan, but you know that. 
The conversation, beginning with post #8 up until your question, is about EFB; and regarding EFB yes I have first hand experience using the method I posted.


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

clyderoad said:


> Of course not Dan, but you know that.
> The conversation, beginning with post #8 up until your question, is about EFB; and regarding EFB yes I have first hand experience using the method I posted.


From the original question he was asking about spores in honey just thought I'd make sure.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Yes, this thread should probably be split up by the mods as we have veered off course from the OP's original question.

Nancy


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Cadence said:


> Right, the massive die off of foragers was not a result of EFB. As I said it was another event that caused that. After that came the issue with EFB. Hives looked very strong coming out of winter. Document hive strength weekly with use of a FLIR.


I haven't read every word in this thread, but this post stood out as something that deserved further investigation.

1) What caused the massive die off?
2) Can you differentiate EFB from chilled brood? 

A massive die off can result in stress that can trigger an infection, or it can result in chilled brood. A colony can bounce back from chilled brood without meds, but not EFB. I'd make sure to identify the cause before dumping in antibiotics. I've had EFB and antibiotics are what is definitely needed, but what you explain in the quoted post seems more likely to be chilled brood. Pics would help.


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## WTS (Feb 2, 2018)

Here is what I found:
National Bee Unit
Animal & Plant Health Agentcy
Hive Cleaning and Sterilisation
May 2016 
http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/downloadDocument.cfm?id=1069

Pg 6 - C. Chemical sterilisation with disinfectants:
"Sodium hypochlorite is present at a
concentration of about 3% in household bleach. Research has shown that immersion
for twenty minutes in a solution of 0.5% sodium hypochlorite kills AFB spores and
other bacteria."


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Non porous surfaces are fairly easy. Old pollen capped cells and stuff embedded in wax will not dependably be reached by the water borne solution. It should do the job if frames are first stripped of foundation. I have seen videos of that being done in a hot water and lye bath but that is nasty stuff. Unless the drawn comb can be saved the labor value might be more than the price of new frames and foundation.


The devil is in the details of how you would do the sterilizing operation without exposing even more of the infective material. If time by itself will do the job it might be a better option.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

crofter said:


> Cadence; would the loss of foragers be from normal life span limits and not being replaced due to the EFB decimating new brood success rate?


No, this was not a normal drop of winter bees dying. This was a massive die off of adult foragers without any signs of DWV or any other visible signs of cause. There was a pile of bees in front of the hives and dead bees on the SBB. There were bees staggering around on the ground. This all happened while the hives and capped brood appeared very healthy. It was about two weeks or more (I didn't log the dates) when I started noticing the lack of capped brood.

The boxes got lighter and emptier of stores and there was less and less capped brood.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

Nancy,

I can't thank you enough for all your sharing of first hand experience and guidance. I am definitely feeling sick over all of this. There is so much to process and so much work to do. By the time I get home from work there is a limited amount of daylight left. I will be working on bagging and disposing the old comb as soon as time allows. There are so many brood combs from all my hives that I am going to try to render wax from them. Then I will bag the rest and dispose of it correctly. I have been assembling new frames w/foundation.

I don't have the link to the article on AFB, but I did save the pdf. This article was dealing with AFB primarily. With in that pdf is this statement:
•	Larger operations should develop quarantine apiaries for:
•	Recently-purchased used equipment and colonies
•	Colonies that may have come in contact with AFB infected colonies
•	Keep colonies/equipment in quarantine for at least 18 months

I called Dadant who gave me two web sites for a form for the meds, but I did not see how to get the forms. If you have any suggestions, I'm listening. I'm just not sure about trying to save the bees in the weakest hives. 

Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences. I was a bit hesitant to even post my problem, but this has been so helpful to me.

Carol


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

AstroBee said:


> I haven't read every word in this thread, but this post stood out as something that deserved further investigation.
> 
> 1) What caused the massive die off?
> 2) Can you differentiate EFB from chilled brood?
> ...


No idea what caused the massive die off. Will probably never know.
State inspector took samples and confirmed EFB after tests were run back at the lab.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

I should mention that the dead bees on the SBB is less than half of what was on the ground outside each hive. A picture of the ground outside the hive did not show the bees very well.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Carol,

I am a bit confused about your mention of rendering wax from the brood combs. That is exactly the wax with the highest likelihood of being contaminated by the EFB bacteria. And rendering it will not necessarily kill the bacteria. Maybe you meant honeycomb? I think you could use the rendered EFB-contaminated wax in candles _for your own use_, but not to reapply to freshly-cleaned frames as an overwaxing. Rendering it will also contaminate whatever equipment you use for doing that. But I would not sell, give, or transfer any wax, in any form, that might wind up somehow being back in contact with bees.

Also, it's really important to keep the brood diseases separate in your mind and in your research. Until I actually had to deal with EFB, I sort of had them pigeonholed together in my mind simply on the basis of both being BAD THINGS and having similar names. They are not related to each other, at all, except that they both make honeybees sick. 

General principles such as operating quarantine yards, etc., apply to all bee pathogens, not specifically to either of the brood diseases.

Many beekeepers share this confusion, too, so when you talk about it to others keep that in mind.

When you said you got some info (but incomplete) from Dadant, was that in regard to the oxy-tet you have on hand? The container should give you instructions for application. Some forms of it are applied in an extender patty made with sugar and Crisco. I have little experience with that. I used tiny amounts of the dry powder mixed with powdered sugar, and then shaken over the frames.

Here's what I did:

Because the dosing is so small I bought a gram-scale on Amazon (with a calibrating weight.) This is what I bought: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012LOQUQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SVUBYE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I decided that the dose for each colony would be mixed separately in order to make sure that each one got a full amount of the oxy-tet, so I bought a set of the these tiny lidded Zip-lock food containers: https://ziploc.com/en/products/containers/square/containers-extra-small-square except mine were round, not square.

I measured in (by weight, using the scale) the correct, single-colony, amount of powdered sugar to be mixed with the oxt-tet.

Then I tared the container and the sugar back to zero.

Then I added the one-colony dose of oxytet to the powdered sugar by tipping it, bit by bit, off the end of a knife until the correct weight in grams showed on the scale.

I used a miniature wire whisk (probably intended for mixing drinks in a bar) to lightly combine the oxy-tet with sugar. The whisk looked like this, only a bit smaller: https://www.amazon.com/Mini-Whisks-...12&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=miniature+wire+whisk.

Then I snapped the lid on the container and shook the daylights out of it. (I was doing this in July in high temps and humidity and I didn't want to oxytet to clump, which it seemed to do readily nor the powdered sugar.)

I prepared a full, one dose set of these in my kitchen. 

Before I began the treatment series, I had gone through the colonies and marked brood frames that had active evidence of EFB, and also marked in a different way any brood combs that had brood. I moved them all to the center of one or two boxes (my stacks are atypically tall, you may not have to do this) and surrounded them with non-brood frames of honey or pollen. I did this so I would know exactly where any open brood was, and could avoid shaking the powdered sugar over any open brood, because the medicine is lethal to open brood. When I had brood frames in two boxes, I made sure that the lower box's brood areas was narrower than the upper one so any meds applied to the upper box wouldn't fall down on open brood frames below.

I also acquired a metal cinnamon-sugar shaker from a cooking store. I bought several ones in order to find one with just the right sized mesh. Mine looks like this one, but may not be this one. https://www.amazon.com/ledovi-Ounce...1523544514&sr=1-1&keywords=metal+sugar+shaker 

And I repurposed the Lexan insert from one of my top feeders to use as barrier to avoid getting sugar/meds on any frames I didn't want to. I think a bent piece of roof flashing would work just as well, may be even a flat piece of cardboard if you can keep from squashing bees with it.

I dumped the contents of one of the mixed sugar/meds zip-lock containers into the shaker. And set the barrier up so it protected the central core of frames where I knew there was brood, and shook the sugar all around the barrier. I did the lower box, first, then re-stacked the upper brood box on, and did that one. It's important to get the whole measured amount on each colony and it took a few false starts before my eye got good enough to get it evenly distributed on the first try. I sprinkled it along the frames and across the end bars. You can see that here:















Hope this is useful.

Nancy


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

Your brood does look like EFB brood. I was going to recommend you get a test but you did, good job.

Read the first link I posted in post #4, you will hear a lot of crazy myths about EFB, you can put most of them to rest with DR White's research.

Also I attacked several links with lots of good information. 

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...d-what-options-(-quot-It-s-complicated-quot-)

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...Newbie-could-use-advice&p=1293636#post1293636

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?312043-Mite-crash-before-Main-Flow

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...s-and-PMS-looking-brood&p=1409687#post1409687


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

EMJ I have rendered EFB contaminated wax and reapplied it to plastic with no reoccurrence of the bacteria, I am sure the bacteria is dead in melted wax. I have also use acetic acid fumigation to store contaminated comb for a year and a half and with no reoccurrence, but I'm not sure it will work on pollen in the frames which may require longer duration. 

A very simple way to decontaminate an empty box; leave it in the sun with a Plexiglas lid. A bleach bath for frames after comb is removed. Then sun dry.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

enjambres said:


> Carol,
> 
> I am a bit confused about your mention of rendering wax from the brood combs. That is exactly the wax with the highest likelihood of being contaminated by the EFB bacteria. And rendering it will not necessarily kill the bacteria. Maybe you meant honeycomb? I think you could use the rendered EFB-contaminated wax in candles _for your own use_, but not to reapply to freshly-cleaned frames as an overwaxing. Rendering it will also contaminate whatever equipment you use for doing that. But I would not sell, give, or transfer any wax, in any form, that might wind up somehow being back in contact with bees.
> Nancy


I buy wax foundation for my frames. I make ornaments out of my wax I render. Thank you for all your information.

FlowerPlanter, Thank you for all the links, I will check them out.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

It was the links in flowerplanters post #40 that pointed me in the right direction to learn about EFB. Thanks again. I will have to wait a few weeks for suitable weather to see if new brood is developing without EFB symptoms. I wasted valuable time last spring waiting for the bees to get over it: the bad ones didn't! Combined weak hives and broke all the rules regarding containing the culprit. I had been amazingly free of disease and had mite counts of near zero with no winter losses in four full years. The old saying comes to mind, "Pride goeth before a fall"!

It looks like some frame building is on the agenda; making bees and drawing comb, rather than much honey next summer. Should be interesting anyway.


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## Tim B (Apr 16, 2009)

Several things I have learned on EFB having studied and fought it for several years:
1. Unlike AFB it can be killed by temperatures well below the boiling point. Something like 150 degrees for 15 minutes. There is a chart somewhere online that shows this. 2. Is not resistant to UV radiation. In other words, Efb on your equipment will die if you set your equipment out in the sun for a few days or a week. Bacteria hiding in cracks, in pollen or wax will not be killed though. 3. EFB survives longest in pollen. I have seen the 18 month timeframe number for quarantining equipment in research. 4. I fill a barrel with a few inches of water and steam as many frames as I can stuff in for 30 or 30 minutes. I am confident they are sterile of efb. I scorch hives although scraping and setting out in the sun would probably also be safe. 5. Antibiotic treatment with the strains of efb I have been dealing with only sets up the whole operation for an epidemic. I have seen one sick hive infect eight or ten hives lined up along a fence row. 6. Antibiotics can clear up an infected hive long enough to get through a season but can never cure the hive. 7. Hives that show efb must be separated and the frames never swapped into clean apiaries. 7. Dusting whole apiaries every five days or so can mask the disease long enough to get through a flow and make an increase but that same apiary will have a high deadout rate. 8. Research shows that when efb shows up in an apiary it is usually found in every hive. I would encourage anyone with just a few hives to get rid of the frames and bees of any efb hive immediately upon diagnosis rather than risk infection of the rest of the apiary and disinfect the lids, boxes and bottoms. 20 dollars of frames and a couple of pounds of sick bees are not worth risking the rest of your hives. 9. I have tried the single shook swarm method on hives with active cases of efb. One I did last year didn't make it past September while the other got efb this spring. That is a small sample; take it for what it is worth. It may not be worth the trouble when I have 100 other healthy hives boiling over with bees that could be split between flows. 10. Frame swapping is a way of the past. My splits are vertical in nature. In other words when starting nucs or new hives all the frames come out of the same hive. Last year at this time I had active efb in 20 percent of my hives. It only got worse into the summer. Dealing with dead hives and wax moths and beetles in weakened hives made beekeeping miserable all last year. Keeping bees from getting in to deadout equipment that had to be stored was nearly impossible leading to a greater spread. With drastic measures we have had some success. This year I have seen it in about 4%. I will not be satisfied until I never see it at all.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

I don't recall where I read this but, as I recall, it was said that hot wax dipping would kill the AFB spores. but I could be remembering completely wrong. 
and according to the post above, wax dipping should kill EFB. 
the wax dipping temp is 250° to 300°. is that hot enough to kill AFB?


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

This is a beekeepers nightmare! I decided to save my equipment with a lot of effort. I shook swarm 4 hives into clean new foundation and clean boxes and bottom boards. They've been there 4 days. I keep going back and forth on a decision to kill them. 

So I built a steam system with a tray to catch the wax and put #8 hardware cloth above it. Set a deep with drawn comb on top and topped it with a metal lid. Steamed the box for 30 minutes, catching the wax. Then the frames are removed and all cocoons and wires are trashed. Did this for just over 100 deep frames of drawn comb. So far I have boiled the half the frames in water with washing soda, then dipped in Clorox. Each deep brood chamber box has been steamed for 30 minutes, scrapped and flame burned. I have been working on this all week. I'm really wondering if I need to boil the other half of the frames. I'm thinking this may be the year for a beevacation. Just shut the apiary down and take a break. This past 2 weeks have worn me out.


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

>I have been working on this all week.
You could have thrown those in the garbage and built 100 new frames faster.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

odfrank said:


> >I have been working on this all week.
> You could have thrown those in the garbage and built 100 new frames faster.


Anther lesson learned.......


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

@Cadence,

My hat's off to you with the effort you've put in so far. Did you decide to treat the bees? I would do that even if you are not sure you are going keep them going, particularly since you have the meds already and can skip the trouble of finding a a vet to get a script.

Also when you can (and if you can) could you post pictures or a description of your steam set up? And what was the source of the steam? And how and with what equipment did you do the scorching? Both of those tasks are in my future and I am trying to organize my processes. Thank you.

How do your bees look, now?

Nancy


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

Here is the tray I made for the bottom which has a channel down the middle, a hole and attachment at one end for the steamer handle and a drain hole at the other end. The steamer came from Home Depot and steams for over 30 minutes (which is more than enough time). I rendered lots of wax out of my frames, so even though it was a lot of work, I do have a byproduct and the frames are now clean of comb, etc. It was just such a large task and I usually try to get jobs done quickly, but there was no rushing through this one.








Here is the link to the steamer I bought: https://www.homedepot.com/p/McCulloch-Multi-Purpose-Canister-Steam-Cleaner-MC1375/205612131

Since I may be out of the bee/honey business this year maybe I'll even get my floors steam cleaned....  Nah, I'll find something better to do with my time.... LOL


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

Here you can see the condensation and melted wax coming out of tray into bucket. Plus the comb that is left over and the frame with wires. Also the box that has been scorched in addition to steamed.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Carol,

That is amazing - you made that! Does the steam go in the hole at the opposite end from the discharge snout?

What did you do the scorching with? The box looks terrific, If mine turn out to be that good, I will be so pleased.

Why did you have comb left over? Was that simply not melted or was it not steamed?

And, that little wax-plaque is so charming. Do you sell them? They must move like the proverbial hotcakes!

Thank for you for the update and your great pictures. It wasn't at all as I imagined, so they are a great help to me. My apologies for asking even more questions.

Hope your bees are perking up in their new boxes.

Nancy


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

R_V said:


> I don't recall where I read this but, as I recall, it was said that hot wax dipping would kill the AFB spores. but I could be remembering completely wrong.
> and according to the post above, wax dipping should kill EFB.
> the wax dipping temp is 250° to 300°. is that hot enough to kill AFB?


Dr White found the temp x duration at which EFB dies;

https://books.google.com/books?hl=e...epage&q=european foulbrood resistance&f=false

He also found the temp for which AFB spores die;

https://archive.org/details/americanfoulbroo809whit

Our wax supply is contaminated with pesticides, the same wax that is used for foundation, many studies show; most of the pesticides found in wax are put there by the beekeeper for mite treatments, nosema and moth balls are the among highest concentrations. If AFB and EFB could survive in wax it is very likely that too would be contaminated in our wax supply/foundation. 

UV rays also kill both EFB and AFB including spores. 

Tim B is right on the money, Most of which can be confirmed with Dr. White's work above.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

Cadence said:


> View attachment 39411
> View attachment 39399
> View attachment 39403
> 
> ...


Nancy, my typo - not comb left over, cocoons was all that was left over.

I haven't started selling the wax molds yet, still trying to find the time to make more. Give lots as gifts though. The steamer really worked great! Unfortunately - the bees dwindled down to too small of a population. Good luck with your bees and overcoming the EFB.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

FlowerPlanter,

Thanks for the links. From that link it looks like the bacteria dies at 174 degrees. Steam is 212 degrees, so the 30 minute steam bath should have killed the EFB in my boxes.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

FlowerPlanter said:


> Dr White found the temp x duration at which EFB dies;
> 
> https://books.google.com/books?hl=e...epage&q=european foulbrood resistance&f=false
> 
> ...


I don't think it was the 100 year old book i was reading  but now that I have read it it sounds like hot wax dipping @ 250° to 300° would kill AFB.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Cadence said:


> View attachment 39411
> View attachment 39399
> View attachment 39403
> 
> ...


Carol: So picture three is just the cocoons with the wax melted away? I've never seen that before. That is crazy looking!


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

Exactly! Just cocoons left, all wax melted into catch bucket. Now that I have this setup I'll be able to rotate out my frames on a smaller scale each year. All cocoons bagged up into garbage.


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