Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Kathyp on March 08, 2009, 05:45:23 pm
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lost my chalkbrood hive. no great loss. the comb is beautiful and most of it pretty new. i don't want to contaminate another batch of bees. was thinking of bleach dipping all frames and comb, rinsing, and air drying. is there any known way to kill off the chalkbrood on comb and frames? hate to waste it, but i'll cut it out and start over if i have to.
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Kathy, go to the MAAREC site listed below. I would not reuse. Have a wonderful, most awesome day, Cindi
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/bkcd/bee_diseases/chalkbrood.html
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thanks cindi. it really sucks. i think i have it in another hive. hopefully it won't be like this one and destroy the colony. i'll try the tea tree oil again and see what happens.
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Kathy, oh crap!!! If it does get worse, just don't work with that hive to try and save it. Remember I told you that I too tried so hard to save that chalkbrood colony of mine? Didn't work, after a couple of months of trying. Just suck it up and take it as a learning curve, hard to do, but sometimes we just gotta say no......good luck girl, I hope it works OK for you in the end. HAve that most wonderfully great and beautiful day, life, health. Cindi
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Have you requeened the chalkbrood hives?
I thought that vinegar is bad for chalkbrood, might be worth looking into. I imagine bleach would do the trick, too.
-rick
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did requeen that hive. also combined two chalkbrood hives to bring the numbers up. still lost them. the one that i think has chalkbrood now was next to the one i lost. i won't know for sure until it warms enough to get in there. if there is disease, i am going to move that hive way away from the other hives. looks like i have a virulent strain of the stuff.
i think i'll melt out the wax and bleach the wood and leave it out in the sun. that ought to do the trick. newer boxes so i don't want to trash them.
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Requeening is the most helpful thing. If you're really worried about the spores, bleach will kill them.
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requeening didn't work. none of the recs i got worked. that's ok. i learned some stuff. i didn't know about using tea tree oil. even though it didn't work for this hive, it's a useful thing to know. i will bleach the equipment.
also read an article that suggested that feeding them up early would help. anyone have an opinion? the hive i lost had sugar on it all winter and i had put pollen patties on the week before i found that they were dead.....and no, they were not dead when i put the patties on :-) but i know their numbers were not good going into winter.
looks like this may end up being an on going problem and i'd be grateful for any new tricks that you guys know.
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If your new queen is just as unhygienic as the previous one, it won't help at all to requeen. :)
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the 1st requeening was with a purchased queen. the second was with brood from a cutout. both seemed to be good queens, but the problem continued. the last chance was combining them with another hive that had developed chalkbrood, although not to the same extent (yet). maybe i missed doing something, but by last year, it was a case of weighing time/money spent on them against benefit which appeared to be nil.
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Chilled brood contributes. Do you think you might have too much ventilation?
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i don't think so. closed the bottom. reducer on smallest hole. inner and outer cover. the numbers may have gone down to the point where they had to much room during our latest cold snap. in fact, i suspect that was a contributing factor in their death. also, if they clustered in the bottom, they may not have gotten to the sugar on the top. they were flying during those couple of warm days, but who knows how many were there. i didn't take the hive apart, just checked in the top to make sure there were bees in all. i saw the first mummies when they cleaned out on those warmer days. don't know if they were new, or leftover from last year. i am sure i had a good brood break this year!!
one odd thing...and i'll verify when it stops snowing and i take the hive apart, but they did not seem to be dead, head in. most seemed dead on the bottom board.
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Try feeding using cider vinegar, 1 tbsp per gallon syrup. I've found that chill brood can often turn to chalkbrood in an hive hygenically weak. A hive that has to colapse the cluster due to cold weather will often leave new brood outside the cluster, it chills and then the chalkbrood develops if the chilled brood isn't cleaned out quickly.
I treat for it the same way I do Nosema but the cure is really hygenic bees. If it's tenacious it's best to 86 the hive and start over with hygenic queen stock (MH, Russians, or Carnies).
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update. it looks like that hive went queenless. perhaps when i did the combine in the fall. the numbers were very low. they could have died off, or drifted on the warmer days to the queen-right hives. most of the dead bees were on the bb, so i think they were winter die off. very few clinging to the frames here and there. mummies on the bottom, but they may have been from the fall also.
almost no stores, but plenty of sugar on the top.