For the love of money Ian that is the second Queen in less than a week that we know of. There are people watching that would purchase those Queens to save them. I'm not one of them so off with her head. Good video but the tear rolling down the cheek is a winner.
Nice vid Ian, i know there is a love affair with some beekeepers and there Queens, you just showed what has to happen from time to time. For the large scale beekeeper you dont have time to mess around with a bad queen,
Wow, talk about timely Ian. One of my hives that survived the winter showed some significant chalkbrood. I didn't remove the queen and within one week of putting a new nuc in the yard, it developed chalkbrood as well. I know what needs to be done now.
I haven’t seen chalk brood in my limited experience but if I did I would be doing exactly as you are if I thought it was queen related. There’s no place for bad genetics in any apiary... no matter the size!
Luego de la división que realízate eliminas los marcos infectados inmediatamente o esperas a que la cría sellada nasca? lo pregunto por que esas unidades ya están contaminadas con las esporas
How do you manage for AFB ? Do you treat in the spring and fall with antibiotics? I hear so many reasons for the spread (old equipment, wearing gloves , sterilizing hive tools). Do you find the brilliance of you stock resilient to it ?
AFB is a serious disease. Talk to your State or Provincial Apiarist for advice to control the disease,. We use constant surveillance and burning of equipment is the only strategy to combat AFB. Yard to yard, we dont disinfect equipment because of practicality. But we'd be careful if entering into an outside operation
put a banana peel in the broodbox and it will kill the chalkbrood And thank lan for that nice Canadian cold front came down here in North Texas today low temperature was 60 degrees and high 90 I thought that was so funny you was she is burning up it was so hot it was 60° up there LOL I'm going to send you some heat from Texas then you'll know it's real hot and humidity is about 85 or 90% walk outside and sweat LOL this week will be back up to 97 like tomorrow nowhere but Texas
@@aCanadianBeekeepersBlog lol yeah I know I wish we could get our bees and brood is thick as yours is up there that don't happen in the south unless are Africanized I got a whole lot of the trades and that is common here but give the banana peel a try he will work an old beekeeper told me that years ago and showed me how have a good day lan
For a colony with chalk brood due to genetics, do you also kill any drones present or remove frames with drone comb to further stop the spread of the bad queen's genetics?
Great content Ian. I found a colony today with a small amount of chalk brood. We had a long dry spell. Would this cause it or do I need to eliminate the queen?
If you just drop a Qcell into a hive with a failing/bad queen, how can you be sure that the virgin will kill her? Won't the hive reject the virgin and kill her instead?
What are other causes of chalkbrood, and I’d it’s not genetics, how do you take care of it? Luckily I haven’t had an issue with it, but I’m only in my third year of beekeeping.
I had a few hives with chalkbrood. It started with one and the number eventually rose to 8. I tried garlic, banana peel, chlorine, constantly removing mummies, cleaning the beeyard, desinfecting the beeyard, desinfecting the equipment (gloves and everything), mowing the beeyard, keeping the hives on direct sunlight, removing the inserts from screened bottom board to allow for better ventilation, feeding with sugar sirup and so on. Whatever I read online, I tried. I tried all this for the last two years. Eventually, I requeened. It didn't work, nothing works. So the only option left was to eliminate them. I suffocated all sick colonies with sulphuric strips. Problem solved. My question is what to do with comb left from those colonies? Do I have to melt it, or I can put it in healthy colony?
I don’t understand how genetics play a part? I have hive at the moment with chalk brood and certainly isn’t from poor housekeeping genetics as the girls do a great job of clearing it out, BUT they are declining and it’s too late here in Australia where I am to requeen. An old beekeeper once told me to spray all the affected combs with ACV which I have done, hopefully they will make it through 🤷♀️
The first Nuc I started had chalk brood from may until late July in 2019 this year I had none and the hive seems to be doing great! Do you think they replace the bad queen themselves?
Replacing queen is a way to go with a chalk brood, good nectar flow fixes the problem , but always in a back of you head you know that there is potential problem with that genetic, best solution is a triple SSS , shoot, shoveling and shut up)) on a queen case just crush her .
Hey Ian I’ve had a hive for two summers now with chalkboard I have replace the queen and some of the older brood frames and I still seem to have the chalkbrood in the hive. the hive seems to continue on it not producing any honey and still makes it through the cold winter. I’m not sure what I should do next with that hive any ideas??
ke6gwf Mite counts are low I always treat for mites spring and fall. I always treat for American foul brood and nozema. I have never sent any samples in for disease.
@@byronbasso9922 I would probably send in a sample, maybe they have high virus load, or something that can be tested for. Also maybe they are under constant stress from lack of honey, or something about the hive location, environment etc? Maybe harmful plants, chemical spray or exposure, contaminated woodenware etc? Do you have other colonies in the same yard that are healthy and productive? If you have requeened and it didn't change, assuming that it's not 3 queens all sensitive to CB, it points to something else causing stress. I personally would get them tested, and if nothing obvious comes back, and other hives next to them are fine, then I might try putting them in a new hive, and working to get them on all new frames (maybe swapping in drawn comb from another hive, or feeding them with foundation in the middle, etc). If they are not near other hives, maybe try moving them to a new location, in case there is something bad about where they are. Also, and this may be important, are you CERTAIN that it's Chalkbrood? Have you studied the subject enough and know what the other diseases look like, to make sure it's chalk brood, and not something similar that needs a different treatment? This is why Ian recommends talking to your local Ag Extension folks, and maybe have your apiary inspector come out and verify what it is.
ke6gwf OK great I think that’s what I will have to do is bring a sample in. that hive is in between two healthy hives 1foot apart from each other located on a farm. So I think I have the ideal location. I did remove old brood frames but I did not change out the hive bodies which I might try next for now. As far as researching chalk brood I am sure that is what it is. The honey that they did collect over the summer I did not remove any honey storage from them and I also feed all winter long sugar syrup. Thank you for your knowledge you are a great help. in the future I might ask you more questions if that would be OK with you
Poor genetics because of a fungal disease? Riiiiiight... I get what you mean (poor genetics at managing the fungus) but you should explain to the viewers what you mean. A lot of your viewers don’t actually understand the life cycle of the honey bee and I’m certain people are leaving this video thinking the queen has a genetic disease.... and she doesn’t. In fact, I’m kind of shocked your plan to manage a fungus was essentially to split the hive and spread it lol... but to each their own I guess, just seems a little irresponsible to pass this off as something others should do when you can see in the comments you’ve mislead people into thinking this is a genetic disease. Gna have to give a thumbs down man
You realize that most likely EVERY SINGLE hive that you have, and that Ian has, will have chalk brood spores in it? And considering it can stay viable on hives, in the soil, etc, for 15 years, you can't really get rid of it. So why don't all bees have chalkbrood? Because a strong healthy hygienic hive generally is not badly effected by it, even if the spores are present. It's very similar to how you have salmonella in your intestines right now, but aren't sick. Or how most people resist many types of diseases, until they have lowered immune systems. So generally when chalk brood shows up like this, it's because of the colony being under stress, not because the spores just appeared. So once you recognize that the spores are always there, and it's only stress that causes the outbreak, then you manage the stress, rather than the outbreak, and the outbreak goes away. Otherwise, how do you explain that even in the badly infected hive, MOST of the larvae were fine and didn't have it? And also, none of the other hives around that one had it, despite it being very easy to spread. So logic (try it ;) ) will tell you that the other brood did in fact Have chalk brood spores, as did the surrounding colonies, but yet they didn't have a problem. Also, in infected colonies, when you remove the stress or replace the queen with one who has resistance to CB, the CB goes away rapidly, because it's a resistance driven event, not an exposure driven event.
The exposure to the fungus can be assumed to be roughly equal through the yard. The stress event triggering the disease outbreak can be assumed to have affected all the hives in the yard. The difference as to why this hive was vulnerable? Genetics, as expressed by the queens offspring. Solution: remove the reproductive queen from the gene pool. Use the hive resources (worker population) to raise new queens selected from better genetic stock. Health and productivity of the colony is restored. Artificial Selection: How It's Done.
