AFB - Alyth

[gavin]

Just in from the Scottish Government:

http://news.scotland.gov.uk/News/Bee-disease-confirmed-1b36.aspx

Bad news for the beekeeper concerned - either this can put a small scale beekeeper out of beekeeping if it is their one and only colony, or someone (and their neighbours) find themselves unable to move to their heather crop.

[fatshark]

This is distressing Gavin. Is this an area that has had repeated AFB outbreaks over the years? NO** postcodes appear quite regularly on Beebase for AFB, but this outbreak is recorded as Alyth? on Beebase, so I'm not sure precisely where it is.

[gavin]

This is distressing Gavin. Is this an area that has had repeated AFB outbreaks over the years? NO** postcodes appear quite regularly on Beebase for AFB, but this outbreak is recorded as Alyth? on Beebase, so I'm not sure precisely where it is.

There was an AFB find there in 2011 so a repeat is not too surprising. Alyth will be the nearest big town, it could be many miles away.

Sadly this is a disease that can pop up just about anywhere. There are some places where it reappears including after a long period with no discoveries.

[The Drone Ranger]

Is it carried by swarms in swarmy years like this one has been?

[fatshark]

Isn't the advice to never feed a swarm for 3 days so any foul brood spores can get 'incorporated' into the wax they draw. Certainly the NBU suggest that swarms spread foul broods. I presume someone has shown that spores incorporated into wax lose infectivity ...

[The Drone Ranger]

Isn't the advice to never feed a swarm for 3 days so any foul brood spores can get 'incorporated' into the wax they draw. Certainly the NBU suggest that swarms spread foul broods. I presume someone has shown that spores incorporated into wax lose infectivity ...
I did a bee diseases course at Auchincruive a good few years ago and they probably told us but I forget so easily
What were we taking about again? :)

[greengumbo]

Colonies can carry AFB spores for a good few years before showing clinical signs and so can spread it easily before you even know spores are present.

I remember reading somewhere that starving a swarm triggers a lot of grooming and during this the spores on the bees are basically all ingested and end up in their rectums (recta ?). The bees then defecate outside and away from the hive and hey presto a cleaner swarm !

[The Drone Ranger]

Must dig out Les Baileys diseases of the honey bee although its a bit dated now I suppose

[fatshark]

And to add to greengumbo's contribution above there are lots of references on the web to the chemical and heat resistance of the spores, together with a reference (here - http://www.oie.int/fileadmin/Home/eng/Health_standards/tahm/2.02.02_AMERICAN_FOULBROOD.pdf) stating specifically that spore-contaminated wax is known to be a source of infection. I presume that this is surface contamination, but since wax reengineered by bees (QC's, drone to worker comb or vice versa etc) even leaving a swarm to build their own comb for three days may not ensure it doesn't spread spores in the future.

Also interesting to note that spores can infect humans and cause fatal septicaemia (RIEG S., BAUER T.M., PEYERL-HOFFMANN G., HELD J., RITTER W., WAGNER D., KERN W.V. & SERR A. (2010). Paenibacillus larvae bacteremia in injection drug users. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 16 (3), 487–489.).

Finally, the first reference above lists the LD50 for 24 hour old larvae as ~9 spores, but that they are uninfectable after 53 hours.

[mbc]

Colonies can carry AFB spores for a good few years before showing clinical signs and so can spread it easily before you even know spores are present.

I remember reading somewhere that starving a swarm triggers a lot of grooming and during this the spores on the bees are basically all ingested and end up in their rectums (recta ?). The bees then defecate outside and away from the hive and hey presto a cleaner swarm !

Spores can lay dormant for years in equipment but generally "colonies" will rid themselves of afb if they don't get clinically sick with it. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16420974

[gavin]

Interesting back-up for the view of persistence in colonies, thanks mbc.

As far as I recall the non-feeding of swarms helps reduce the spore load by prolonging the spell in their honey stomach and allowing the proventriculus to filter out particles which are then processed and vented as GG says. No doubt the working of wax when there is no comb ready to use also helps clean their mouthparts of bacterial cells and spores too.

Incoming swarms *might* bring it to an apiary but another way would be outgoing swarms reoccupying contaminated sites and providing lots of inoculum to spread out through robbing or absconding. When cases reoccur at historic sites something like that must be happening. As long as it was properly tidied up by the beekeeper previously of course.

[Adam]

My guess is that AFB is (was) often transmitted by the robbing of a dead colony site or re-using it. With varroa and less feral bees around now as a result, maybe that transmission path will reduce - would we see it in the statistics I wonder?

In the early 70's my Fathers bees got it and the belief at the time was that there was a (former) AFB colony in the tower of an old church, although he did buy some second-hand equipment which might have been a source of infection. In his (our) case, I was away at school at the time, but pretty well everything was burned apart from the scorched lifts and roofs of his two WBC's. The nuc he had and everything else went into the pit. All I have left is his small hammer for making up frames and I found his rusty old smoker last year.

[gavin]

That's me involved in this one too. 10 days ago I collected two hives from the Coupar Angus area having been invited out to see them. The beekeeper, unknown to me, died suddenly a month ago and his widow was not surprisingly very keen to move the bees on. I left them on my long-term heather site and decided not to shift any other bees there until I'd checked them out. Last Thursday I visited them with a beginner and three frames in it was clear there was more than just chalkbrood there. I suspected EFB (twisted, collapsing open larvae and brown gunge under the cappings) and sent photos then samples for analysis. Today the guys came and brought matches (for stirring and stringing out gloopy larvae) and lateral flow tests. No doubt about it, AFB.

The case is being included in a cluster in the Coupar Angus - Meigle - Alyth triangle. There are, apparently, a couple of cases that don't show on BeeBase over the last 5 years. The origin of the hives involved here is just over 5km from the case reported as being Alyth but actually some miles to the south.

AFB is less contagious than EFB and I've been careful with the segregation of equipment so I'm optimistic that it will spread no further. I mean spread no further to the rest of my bees - clearly there could be more AFB out there.

[The Drone Ranger]

Bad luck with that Gavin
I had a few of Thornes lateral flow kits a couple for each AFB and EFB but used them testing (paranoia) and haven't bought any more (yet)
I used to use the potato blight ones for the spuds but they are too dear now, and I'm so used to seeing blight I don't need them :)
I have a spare (not very protective ) suit and a spare smock for visiting other folks bees
Good spot though because that could have brought you no end of problems if you hadn't seen past the chalkbrood

[busybeephilip]

quote from the Sniffer Dog thread

<<Hmmm.....we could do with one of those sniffer dogs. Our inspectors have recently confirmed 21 outbreaks of AFB in Northern Ireland in a triangle Bangor/Londonderry/Irvinestown, its just the north and south of NI that are clear to date, its being put down to beeks involved with movement/sale of bees or use of old comb ? and there appears to be very sporadic pockets ie there seems to be no epicenter or source found to date>>


I too try not to mix equipment from different sites, I keep separate tools for each site, boxes are marked and recorded. The one thing that would worry me is making up nucs (both mating and 5 framers) and transfering them to a new location to stop bees drifting back to original hives, its not always convenient to keep boxes close up for 4 days so next year there is going to be an isolation apairy. Sometimes beeks ask me to "look" at their bees and for this I would use my visitor set up.

[gavin]

I too have labelled a box for each apiary. Each has its own hive tool and the nitrile gloves get the same treatment until they need replaced.

My movement of nucs from site to site is very infrequent as I usually shut them in for 4 days on the same site - however there is a degree of mixing at heather sites where 2 or 3 lowland apiaries go to one site. I'm still keeping them segregated and sticking to the box system there.

[mbc]

Well done for spotting it Gavin, confidence you can spot anything out of the ordinary and a will to deal with it make foul brood a minor concern in the big picture. If we all practiced vigilance then it would fade into the background even further than the nuisance it is now. Less than 1% of beekeepers come across foul brood.

[gavin]

Lab tests back .... both foulbroods are present!

23902391

[mazza]

Crikey! Sorry to hear that Gavin :-(
Is that both foulbroods in different colonies, or both in one hive?! Well done you for spotting it though, and just as well you did before you put them together with your own bees. Makes you realise it's something that 'could happen to you' and not just a news story... and now hoping my girls are ok!! (Must do a specific disease check next time I'm out)

[gavin]

Crikey! Sorry to hear that Gavin :-(
Is that both foulbroods in different colonies, or both in one hive?! Well done you for spotting it though, and just as well you did before you put them together with your own bees. Makes you realise it's something that 'could happen to you' and not just a news story... and now hoping my girls are ok!! (Must do a specific disease check next time I'm out)

The lab confirmed both of them from one frame sent in from just one hive. Someone wrote to me tonight and used the word 'unique'. I wonder if that really is the case - both foulbroods in one hive being unique (in Scottish terms at least)?

Anyway, despite the relative proximity of your hive to some previous West Lothian cases (going back decades, I understand), as Nick Ross used to say, Don't have Nightmares!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECOcj9c4evA