AFB or something else?

[Mountaineerfan]

Hi!
I'm just coming through the winter with my first hive.  they overwintered well, I thought.  Today was finally nice, in the upper 60s and sunny.  I went into the brood chamber looking for her highness.  What I found concerned me.  There are no eggs, and what little bit of brood I found were dead in their cells, and i saw one that looked like it had half way chewed through the capping and was dead with his tongue sticking out.  I'm really afraid that it may be AFB, but I'm hoping that it's just brood that died during the last freeze we had a couple of weeks ago.  I did find the queen, she was wandering around on the comb by herself with no attendants.  Could she be a virgin?  Could they have requeened over the winter?  I saw a couple of what used to be supercedure cells, so is that a possibility?  Can anyone tell me what AFB looks like?  The field bees are bringing in pollen like crazy, which I thought meant there should be brood around. 
Please ask me anything else you may need to know to help with this diagnosis.  This was the best producing hive last year (I had two, one starved), and I hate to lose it!
Steve

[Understudy]

http://www.masterbeekeeper.org/B_files/disease1.htm

Do a rope test.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Michael Bush]

Yes, do a rope test.  This time of year, chilled brood is a much more likely cause.

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/pest&disease/pppdIndex.html

[buzzbee]

Mix a little powdered milk in warm water. Swirl a toothpick in the brood,drop it in the warm water and let stand a while. if the powdered milk and water clear you may have foul brood.

[Ruben]

Or you can send a sample 2 x 2 inch to the Beltsville Lab in MD and they will test it and call you with the results. They did one for me back in October and confirmed AFB. The comb stunk really bad the cappings were sunken in with tiny pinholes in the cappings and the rope test with a tooth pick would string out 3/4 of an inch and snap back. I hope you find different results than I did.

[Cindi]

Hopefully you will have looked at the link and that may have helped you.

You need some clarification on what people are talking about when they say to do the rope test.  When a colony has American Foulbrood, the larvae die in the cell.  The larvae turns into a mucky, gooey, stinky, (wretched stench), smells like rot, and any kind of rot stinks.  If you insert a toothpick or other narrow object into the cell and remove some of the contents of the rotting mass, if you see what can only be described as the gooey mass making a thin ropiness as you pull it out, then there is strong suspicion that this is the dreaded AFB.  You will need to take some immediate action to prevent the spread.  I cannot talk about this because I do not have the expertise to guide you correctly.  And bad advice is not good. 

I don't think that you have AFB.  Like was said by Michael Bush, you probably have some kind of chilled brood.  Best of the days.  Cindi

[Michael Bush]

>Mix a little powdered milk in warm water...

Holts milk test:
The Hive and The Honey Bee. "Extensively Revised in 1975" edition. Page 623.

"The Holst milk test: The Holst milk test was designed to identify enzymes produced by B. larvae when speculating (Host 1946). A scale or toothpick smear is swirled gently into a tube containing 3-4 milliliters of 1 per cent powdered skim milk and incubated at body temperature. If the spores of B. larvae are present, the cloudy suspension will clear in 10-20 minutes. Scales from EFB or sacbrood are negative in this test."

(Note: the name of B. larvae has now been changed by the taxonomists to Paenbacillus larvae.  You'll find many references under both names.)

Discussion of Holts Milk Test:
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=004299#000000

Test kits:
http://www.beeequipment.com/products.asp?pcode=315
http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=716&osCsid=fca1d9d269ea1eab911d6db7cf289bb9

Beltsville Lab:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=7473

[Mountaineerfan]

I knew I came to the right place!  The dead brood I'm seeing are not rotted larvae, they are more of nymphal-stage (sorry, I'm a fly fisherman by nature!).  They are mostly formed, and are just dead in the cells.  That's what makes me think chilled brood.  Any idea why the absence of eggs?  Could there have been a supercedure sometime during the warm part of this winter, and she's just not mated yet?  It's supposed to be in the upper 60s here in Atlanta this week.  Do you think there may be some drones this early in the year for her?
Thanks again for your help!!
Steve

[Ivan]

I'm in Colorado and we have drones allready :-D and the warmest this year was 60 degrese.

[Mountaineerfan]

OK, I went out yesterday to watch the bees, not get into them.  I have decided that i am just going to leave them alone for a couple of weeks, other than adding syrup.  They are flying like crazy and bringing in tons of pollen, so I'm just going to let them do their thing, especially since I know they have a queen.
Thanks for the help!