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Author Topic: Regular Soap For Disease Control?  (Read 1516 times)

Offline njfl

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Regular Soap For Disease Control?
« on: April 03, 2014, 11:05:43 am »
We got into a discussion last night about this, and so I'm throwing it out to you.  We are now told that washing our hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds will kill any and all germs - bacteria and spores.  So would this work, then, if we washed our hive equipment in soap and water to kill any possible bee diseases like nosema or foulbrood?

Any opinions?

Offline iddee

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Re: Regular Soap For Disease Control?
« Reply #1 on: April 03, 2014, 11:17:06 am »
We are also recently told that it will kill the friendly bacteria that give us our immunity, therefore leaving us susceptible to any small amount of germs in the air or on what we touch. In other words, killing our ability to ward off germs.

Also, our hands may release spores and bacteria more easily than wood. It may not work as well on wood.
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Offline njfl

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Re: Regular Soap For Disease Control?
« Reply #2 on: April 03, 2014, 11:55:36 am »
That's a good point.  I scorch my equipment after I clean it, but some others don't like to do that.

Offline flyboy

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Re: Regular Soap For Disease Control?
« Reply #3 on: April 03, 2014, 05:08:33 pm »
In our modern day way of looking at disease all bacteria are considered bad. We have more bacteria in our body than cells and if we didn't we'd die, as they do a whole list of things including digest food, ward off bad bacteria etc.

Soap does not kill everything and that's a good thing, because we would die if all the bacteria were killed in us. Bacteria has been found in deep ocean areas above volcanoes where the heat, steam, acidity was previously thought to kill everything.

Soap kills bacteria within a certain spectrum leaving everything else alone. Same with heat/antibiotics, you name it.

Another thing about soap is that it can be a gift that keeps on giving if the residues linger and the bees pick it up and ingest it. It may kill off the beneficial bacteria in their gut causing them to starve to death. I read of someone who gave his bees a very tiny amount of colloidal silver to help them rid themselves of a pest. The bees slowly starved to death, yet lots of humans consume it daily for health reasons.

I personally only use soap when my hands are really dirty and I have a social occassion or they are greasy. Your skin absorbs everything it touches in varying degrees and I don't wish to absorb soap, which to me is really an antibiotic, so I don't go along with this advertising and hysteria created by the soap companies.

I cannot tell you what to do, but I would be mindful of what you are putting in the hives as you might end up with no bees or contaminated honey.

BTW charred wood is carcinogenic from what I am led to understand.
Cheers
Al
First packages - 2 queens and bees May 17 2014 - doing well

Offline johng

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Re: Regular Soap For Disease Control?
« Reply #4 on: April 03, 2014, 06:06:56 pm »
Its my understanding most diseases of the hive are not passed from one hive of bees to the next hive by reusing  old equipment. EXCEPT  AFB! The spores of AFB are very hard to kill, they can be in and under old wax and propilos so you can't just wash it or scrape it off. Even soaking it in bleach won't be 100% effective. 

Online Michael Bush

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Re: Regular Soap For Disease Control?
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2014, 10:27:03 am »
"Germs" are what keep them healthy.  Unless you have dealt with a hive that is not healthy, spreading microbes is not only a good thing, but an unavoidable thing.  According to Hoopingarner's work:

"The percentage of foragers originating from different colonies within the apiary ranged from 32 to 63 percent"--from a paper, published in 1991 by Walter Boylan-Pett and Roger Hoopingarner in Acta Horticulturae 288, 6th Pollination Symposium (see Jan 2010 edition of Bee Culture, 36)

So the bees are drifting a lot and moving things from hive to hive.
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Offline 10framer

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Re: Regular Soap For Disease Control?
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2014, 11:39:56 am »
i've never had a case of nosema but any hive with afb gets burned.  i don't worry about it. 

Offline jayj200

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Re: Regular Soap For Disease Control?
« Reply #7 on: April 13, 2014, 10:17:08 am »
down here in Florida I tell friends to wash their screen enclusers
with spic&span seams to kill mold nearly two years.
rinse scrub rinse
don't know about bees