Bee Health Awareness Day - Tarland, Aberdeenshire - Saturday 2 June

[gavin]

Bee Health Awareness Day - Tarland, Aberdeenshire

Saturday 2 June 2018, 9:30-16:30


A full day of lectures and practical sessions covering: American foulbrood (AFB), European foulbrood (EFB), other bee pests and diseases including Varroa, apiary hygiene, good husbandry practices and integrated pest control.

The key people in bee health in Scotland from the Scottish Government, including SASA and the Lead Bee Inspector, SRUC and the SBA will lead the sessions.

The cost is £25 per attendee which includes refreshments, lunch and all course materials. Payment is by cheque made payable to SAC Consulting. Spaces are limited so early booking is advised.

To book your place please complete the form (https://scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/images/icagenda/files/bees-bee-health-days-2018-flyer-and-registration-form-2-june-18-tarland-aberdeenshire.pdf)and return it to:Vicky O’Donnell, P Spur, Saughton House, Broomhouse Drive, Edinburgh EH11 3XD or email your application to Bees_Mailbox@gov.scot

Please note payment is non-refundable if you do not attend.

You are also required to be a registered beekeeper on BeeBase before your application will be accepted:
https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/public/register.cfm?

The awareness day is brought to you by the Bee Health Improvement Partnership, a collaboration between the Scottish Government, Scotland's Rural College, the Scottish Beekeepers Association and the Bee Farmers Association. We take the awareness days around Scotland and this year the other event, in Dumfries, has been fully booked by members of the local association.

[Thymallus]

A full day of lectures and practical sessions covering: American foulbrood (AFB), European foulbrood (EFB), other bee pests and diseases including Varroa,.

Not sure how to say this, but surely that should be with total emphasis on varroa as the major "pest" and killer of bees in the UK.
We seem to over emphasise on the rarer diseases (AFB, EFB)rather than focus on the prevalent ones doing the current damage.

[lindsay s]

Not sure how to say this, but surely that should be with total emphasis on varroa as the major "pest" and killer of bees in the UK.
We seem to over emphasise on the rarer diseases (AFB, EFB)rather than focus on the prevalent ones doing the current damage.
The rarer diseases might be the ones that go unnoticed, EFB is still out there. I’m surprised there is nothing about this here or on the S.B.A. website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-43974758

[Mellifera Crofter]

Talking of Varroa ... Breaking some brace comb with drone brood when opening a colony a couple of days ago, I found Varroa mites on the drone larvae. That shocked me because I've treated all the colonies in that apiary with ApiVar in September, and I've always had such faith in ApiVar. The bees are now next to an oil seed rape field, and the flowers are just beginning to open - and I'd like to have honey from the bees which means I can't treat them with ApiVar now.

I haven't yet done a sugar-roll test to see how bad it is. There weren't any Varroa on the Varroa tray which was in the hive over winter (but cleaned regularly). Any suggestions, please?

Kitta

[fatshark]

Mite numbers were probably pretty low over winter post treatment with Apivar ... however, wind-swept and exposed your hill is, the small amount of brood reared during some of the winter might be enough to provide the mites an opportunity to continue to reproduce and - as a consequence - avoid being phoretic for too long when there's a chance they'd be dislodged or groomed and fall onto the tray.

Did you do a midwinter broodless oxalic acid treatment? That's an ideal way to minimise the mite levels for the start of the new season (http://theapiarist.org/kick-em-when-theyre-down/).

Depending upon forage/flow you might have an opportunity to treat after the OSR and before the heather ...

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Fatshark, I'll read your blog posts more carefully now.

No, in my nine years of keeping bees, I've never treated the bees with oxalic acid, and I've never discovered in spring that I should have done. I thought ApiVar killed all the mites and I only have to be on the lookout for new mites arriving in the summer.

As you suggested, I suppose I can wait until after the OSR harvest. Or, thinking about it now, perhaps I should do sugar-roll tests on all the colonies in that apiary (there are eight colonies), and then remove the ones with Varroa to a distant apiary away from other bees and treat them immediately. I just hope they don't all have Varroa mites!

Kitta

[fatshark]

Unfortunately, none of the mite treatments are more than about 95% effective ... a few of the little blighters always seem to avoid being slaughtered.

[Thymallus]

And as Randy Oliver points out varroa have developed lots of different ways to spread into your colonies even after treatment.
Robbing from dying/weak feral colonies being a major transmission route.

[Calluna4u]

Not sure how to say this, but surely that should be with total emphasis on varroa as the major "pest" and killer of bees in the UK.
We seem to over emphasise on the rarer diseases (AFB, EFB)rather than focus on the prevalent ones doing the current damage.

Aberdeenshire, where this is being held, has a persistent and long standing background issue with AFB. There are old apiaries, some of them long abandoned, scattered about in hidden and not so hidden corners. AFB vigilance is actually VERY important there.

I have sent pictures and map refs in before, even as recently as last season. Its a potential hazard and old apiaries seem to be more prevalent in that area than in others.

Its not really an EFB area, but there may well be beekeepers attending from the EFB area.