Chalkbrood.

[Hawklord]

I have a colony that has quite a lot of chalkbrood. The queen seems to be laying well but the workers don't seem to be removing the dead quick enough. Would a frame of hatching brood from another colony help the situation temporarily until I can raise a new queen?

 

[Haughton Honey]

An article for you.

Re-queening later in the year is possibly the best option, but as the colony builds towards peak-season and gains strength it should become less of an issue.

Some years are worse than others, depending upon the weather.

 

[Skyhook]

What size is the colony? in my experience, it shows up when a colony is too small to keep itself warm, and goes away when it is. Adding emerging brood may help, but if the colony is not filling the BB I would replace the end frames with insulation and add or increase insulation over the crown board.

 

[barratt_sab]

...add or increase insulation over the crown board.

That's interesting - sudden flash of the b****ing obvious.

We have one colony that is suffering particularly badly at present, There was a tiny bit evident on the first inspection of the year, but then it was much worse two weeks later... two weeks after we had taken the poly insulation out of the roof.

That'll be going back in, I think, until we get warmer weather.

 

[Norton]

Yes even a slight drop in brood temperature for five minutes can cause enormous problems where chalkbrood is present in the hive. Put a frame in the fridge for a few minutes and the next day it will be full of it. It is induced like this in experiments.

 

[Hawklord]

Thanks for the replys. The colony had 3.5 frames of brood and 6 frames of bees 2 weeks ago.

 

[Skyhook]

That's interesting - sudden flash of the b****ing obvious.

We have one colony that is suffering particularly badly at present, There was a tiny bit evident on the first inspection of the year, but then it was much worse two weeks later... two weeks after we had taken the poly insulation out of the roof.

That'll be going back in, I think, until we get warmer weather.

Do you take the insulation out of your loft in the summer? Top insulation should stay in all year, keeps it warm in winter and cool in summer.

.

 

[sunhivebee]

What size is the colony? in my experience, it shows up when a colony is too small to keep itself warm, and goes away when it is. Adding emerging brood may help, but if the colony is not filling the BB I would replace the end frames with insulation and add or increase insulation over the crown board.

Agree. Tends to resolve itself with growing colony size and warmer weather. I personally would not augment with brood from other colony - unnecessary interference, I reckon.

 

[PBee]

A recent study in Australia linked chalkbrood disease with a (genetically derived?) deficiency in gut bacteria which inhibit the chalkbrood pathogen ascosphaera apis. The only intervention they found aided recovery was feeding with sugar syrup.

1. This study has shown that the use of bees bred for hygienic behaviour (i.e. WA ‘Better Bees Program’) strains can also be recommended for use by apiarists from a bee gut microflora viewpoint, as they contain significantly higher number of gut bacteria than normal bees.
2. The feeding of sugar solution seems to be the only artificial way to improve recovery from Chalkbrood disease currently. The increase in gut microflora with this method again suggests this to be a beneficial method for increasing gut bacterial populations. Therefore feeding of sugar solution can also be recommended in relation to gut microflora maintenance.