Sunday, 15 April 2012

Chalk Brood

Friday 13th April's inspection went OK, JP and I managed to go through the hive without breaking any more comb, although we took off a bit of brace comb.  The most worrying thing was the amount of mummies we found at the bottom of the Hive, the Hive has a severe case of Stone or Chalk brood, From what I have read, best treatment is re-queening, but that is not going to happen this year.  We did see Queen Kylie on the very last comb, no pics as my normal camera is currently in South Africa with Ellz and the camera I used was a bit rubbish. But here are the pics we got.

My top bar, before we started, weather was fine and sunny. 

First Comb with Black hair clip, empty comb. 

Next Combs, are primarily honey stores. 

More honey stores.  
This one looks like crossed legs! 

These 3 are melded together, when the hive is stronger, I will think about separating them. 



I could see no signs of Queen cells on any of the combs, but as the Hive is not particularly strong, I would not expect them to be considering swarming. 

Moving nearer the brood and you can see the Mummies at the bottom. 

And after a human clean up!  I will put the mummies under the microscope at some point. 

Some brood comb, hopefully some will survive the Chalk brood virus.  Sorry, pic is to bad, I think its the camera Da Vinci invented. 

  
Some Drone Brood at the bottom, lots of bees, but will there be enough to survive the disease. It is a battle of a strong hive winning through, I think its kind of like when we have flu, most of us survive, but if we are weak, we just cant fight it.  


 


What a waste, all these baby bees.  If they had survived my hive would have been literally swarming. I cleaned as much as I could out to save the girls some work.  If anyone has any tips, I would be glad to hear them.  This waiting and seeing if they can clear the disease out by themselves, is not working for me.  Do you think tea tree would help?


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3 comments:

  1. Mike16 April 2012 at 22:28

    If you look at picture 12 closely you will see 3 cells with tiny holes in the cappings. I'm not sure if you have treated this colony for varroa as I haven't read your whole blog yet but I would suggest removing every comb with brood eggs and larvae from the hive whilst at the same time move any damaged combs to the back and score/bruise the honey cappings. I'm assuming you have the entrance at one end if so add a new bar nearest the entrance and wait for them to build a nice amount of comb before adding another new bar thus pushing all the old combs further back. If you keep doing this every few months over the course of 2 years you should always have nice straight combs and after the oldest combs which can contain all manner of things such as disease, pesticides and other such nasties.

    Chalk brood
    If you remove all the brood, larvae and eggs now wait 2 weeks and check again for chalk brood, if you still have it then requeening is the next best option. However its said all colonies have chalk brood some worse than others but provided the colony remains strong they can deal with but if they get nosema or another problem they will dwindle and fail very quickly.

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  2. Mike16 April 2012 at 22:57

    I've just read through some of your other posts and see you have the entrance in the middle. In which case I would strongly recommend using dividers to help condense the colony into a much smaller proportion of the hive. This helps the bees feel they have a snug space to manage and it helps them contain the brood nest heat which is vital for them to keep consistent whilst rearing brood. So if you put in a divider just to one side of the entrance holes and move all the other top bars to one side of the hive and then use another divider to condense them after the last comb with nothing stored in it. Then only add new bars as required as they expand. When they reach one end of the hive then start moving the middle divider out towards the other end to increase the hive space.

    I had a quick look to see if you treated them for varroa but didn't see anything. I know some top bar bee keepers do not treat their bees but since becoming a bee keeper several years ago I found and believe treating your colony is vital unless you are prepared to shook swarm them every year but even this isn't enough by itself. (Shook swarm - remove every bar with eggs, larvae and brood) Yes it would be lovely not to have to treat for varroa but I tried all the methods suggested by some TBH keepers and although some are far better than others none of them even in combination come close to giving your colony the best chance of going into Winter strong and healthy.

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    Replies
    1. Unknown18 April 2012 at 20:10

      Hi Mike, some sound advice there. I have ordered some Apiguard and hopefully will treat at the weekend. I do have a separator board in about half way down, I was anticipating have the space to split the hive if required, but survival is becoming the primary concern. When I inspect at the weekend I will remove the brood combs and wait and see if they can build up again. What I don't understand is why I should I score/bruise the honey cappings? Will it be holding traces of the disease? Ideally, the floor of the hive would slide out so I could clean up for them, but my mesh is fixed.

      Thanks for help and I will let you know how I get on. Fingers crossed.

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