Nosema may well kill...

[susbees]

...your bees.

They had a rotten wet summer, limited proper stores to winter on (sugar isn't real food), long winter, late pollen......and if they are a shadow of their pre-winter selves they likely have bad Nosema.

Nosema ceranae is not linked with dysentery. It is less obvious. Dysentery isn't necessarily linked to Nosema apis either.

Finally got into the first colonies today. Changed some floors and found a tiny patch of dysentery on a frame of a weak Q+ colony. Under the scope: spores are very heavy. The adjacent very strong hive was tanking in willow and other pollens - floor sample still showed some Nosema in the bees.

Wednesday, I'll be scoping samples from the 50% weakest colonies. Then it'll be a big juggle on our drawn comb supplies for coddled Baileys of the bee kind.

Get your bees checked...

 

[Haughton Honey]

Well said susbees.

Beeks take note.

I found a few suspect colonies today myself that had entered Winter in a strong state and have now dwindled to next to nothing (a couple with tell-tale signs).

 

[VEG]

so what is the cure?

 

[susbees]

so what is the cure?

The approach now is a Bailey comb change for disease. Take out all unused combs and bag them up for dealing with. Move combs with brood/stores to one end of the box and dummy it down. Close up the bottom entrance. Make a new entrance above the frames - couple of holes in an eke or some arrangement with 8mm stripwood. Add a clean brood box and put the frame with the queen on up the top and place a drawn comb either side. Add a frame feeder and dummy down again. After a week, drop that soiled frame down and gradually add foundation...and feed. Of course there is a reasonable to high possibility of supersedure as the queen may be infected, but if you only have a couple of colonies it's worth the micro-propagation. And for the rest of us reduces the chance of contaminated water supplies and continuing problems.

 

[itma]

so what is the cure?

Clean comb and good dry hives is about the best we can do these days. Which is why some advocate a shook swarm.
Thymol may help.
'Snake Oils' probably don't.

 

[itma]

Incidentally ...

... I was recently introduced to a different way of doing microscopy testing for Nosema.

Squash an individual (sample forager, dead ... naturally!) bee's abdomen directly onto the microscope slide, (so the guts come out of the backside), add a drop of water, remove debris, place cover slip.
Per hive, check 10 specimens individually, and rate the hive on the number of bees with significant infection.

Something of a change from mashing up 30 bees together ...

 

[MuswellMetro]

if any in the north london area can't find other beekeeper who will test their bees for Nosema then i don't mind testing them if you can get 30 frozen bees to me...preferable dropping them off frozen ,

not by post though as i dont want stinking bees on the hall carpet as the last lot by post was eaten by my dog..he has also had had a £30 queen bee for brunch

..pm me if you want to follow this up

 

[Hivemaker.]

Trickling oxalic acid shortens the bees life, and does wonders for nosemic bees as well, not so good after a poor season in 2012, followed by a long cold spring.

 

[Black Comb]

Trickling oxalic acid shortens the bees life, and does wonders for nosemic bees as well, not so good after a poor season in 2012, followed by a long cold spring.

yes, i have been guilty of this, to my cost.

 

[susbees]

Incidentally ...

... I was recently introduced to a different way of doing microscopy testing for Nosema.

Squash an individual (sample forager, dead ... naturally!) bee's abdomen directly onto the microscope slide, (so the guts come out of the backside), add a drop of water, remove debris, place cover slip.
Per hive, check 10 specimens individually, and rate the hive on the number of bees with significant infection.

Something of a change from mashing up 30 bees together ...

Statistics aside - which is why we use 30...I'd argue that mashing up 30 abdomens is way quicker than setting up and scanning 10 slides or preps.

 

[itma]

Another point was that, since the disease spores are pretty tough, microscopy testing can detect the disease even in long-dead bees. Hence testing of dead-outs is perfectly possible.
/ even if you have to keep them away from MM's omnivorous canine!

 

[MuswellMetro]

.
/ even if you have to keep them away from MM's omnivorous canine!

a Labrador called Hudson...

 

[Finman]

.
If nosema has killed your hive, you cannot do anything any more.

Nosema violates the hive allready in late autumn.

Then there are mild cases. I can see them that they have been resless during winter, they have poo problems and then they are not able to eate pollen patty.
When I have given in Spring a frame of emerging bees from big hive, it starts to make normal way brood.

I had this spring two cases that after winter there were bees quite much but during one month they disppeared. Cure fror that phenomenon is spare hives made last summer.

 

[Finman]

Clean comb and good dry hives is about the best we can do these days. Which is why some advocate a shook swarm.
Thymol may help.
'Snake Oils' probably don't.

What help shaking makes when bees are sick. Nosema is in bees' stomack. Vain to shake them any more.

Thymol does not help. It should be give in autumn.

What you can do is that don't mix sick bees and healthy bees.

 

[Finman]

.
But sad to see, that forum is making its own Nosema Science again.

.

 

[mbc]

.
Cure fror that phenomenon is spare hives made last summer.

 

[Finman]

.

Some bee strains are more sensitive to nosema than others.
One way is that don't save sick hives and select the bee stock more tolerant.


You notice it when you buy new queens and compare hives.
.

 

[pargyle]

a Labrador called Hudson...

Well that explains it - a Lab will eat ANYTHING - mine, over the years, have eaten a pair of tights, small ball, plastic milk bottle top (dropped on floor whilst opening bottle - he thought it was food !), radiator roller head, more odd socks that I can count, several kids toys and those are just the inedible things ... all seem to go through all right [No ... you don't want to know !].

Apologies ... this is a really useful thread - sorry to pollute it but couldn't resist !

 

[DanBee]

Yes, I'd echo susbees' warning. We ran an adult diseases course the weekend before last; of the 14 hive samples brought by students, 12 had easily detectable nosema. Most of these were not brought due to concerns with the colony, but because they were told to bring samples to work with. Not unsurprising given the extended period of confinement; it'll be a season for viruses too on the same basis.

If this level of nosema is consistent across the country, then when (if?!) the weather improves we will not see colonies suddenly race away - nosema will hold them back. Nosema infection inhibits the adult bee's ability to digest protein; its knock-on effect is to limit the production of brood food.

Feeding an abundance of protein and moving to clean combs will help greatly. Do not shook swarm, use fumigated drawn combs in great preference to foundation. Some apiaries/areas are suffering pollen starvation at the moment - hence the recent NBU emails regarding pollen substitute feeding.

It's going to be a difficult season and the goal of this year will be simply to take a number of healthy well-prepared colonies into next winter.

 

[itma]

What help shaking makes when bees are sick. Nosema is in bees' stomack. Vain to shake them any more.

Thymol does not help. It should be give in autumn.
...

.
But sad to see, that forum is making its own Nosema Science again.

.

The advice I have had from Bob Smith (well-known in the UK, and a retired Bee Inspector) is that providing clean comb is important to Nosema treatment/control.
And that a shook swarm (with feeding) is the quickest way to provide clean comb. (With a Bailey comb change, there is bound to be more spread of spores onto the new comb from the old.) // He prefers to do it during his "June Gap" - accompanied by syrup feeding.
Renewing comb (so it never gets really old and manky) is considered the most important factor in avoiding getting a Nosema problem.

When I said

Thymol may help.
'Snake Oils' probably don't.

I could have made my post longer in the hope of being misunderstood by fewer readers.
I should have said
Thymol in the Autumn is said to help to control Nosema through the Winter ahead, but that it is not a guaranteed 'cure'. It may be more effective against the more seasonal Nosema Apis than against Ceranae.
And whether the "marine extracts" or "beet extracts plus molasses" in commercially-available patent medicines actually have any effect has yet to be scientifically established (celebrity endorsements notwithstanding).

According to the official advice in the UK, hive hygiene is the priority, now that Fumidil B is no longer available.
Glacial Acetic Acid fumes, for a couple of weeks, will destroy Nosema spores, so that should be part of hive (box and comb) sanitisation procedures.


I didn't mention that, (because Nosema-susceptibility is believed to have a genetic component), re-queening is also advised as a possible beekeeper action.
The reason I didn't mention it was that it seems a bit desperate, to simply roll the dice again and hope for better luck next time... / unless, like Finman, you can selectively breed for Nosema resistance.