Winter Advice for South West Queensland

Thanks Peter. That’s amazingly kind of you :slight_smile: .

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Hi Judianne,

Are you sterilising the flow frames and box I assume whilst burning the brood?

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Very good question from @BayoNat.

I know this must be an incredibly hard time for Judi, but we can all learn from her experience. If you keep bees for long enough, you will experience something like this. It isn’t the fault of the beekeeper, it probably comes from the robbing tendencies of bees. Not much we can do about that.

However, the question leads to the concepts that it is probably best to destroy wood frames (they are cheap), but hive boxes and Flow frames can be irradiated to sterilize them. There are guidelines from Flow on the recommended radiation dose, and Stericycle in Australia are willing to cooperate with this. Just wanted to be clear for @Judianne that you don’t have to destroy everything, and many of us hope that anyone afflicted with AFB will start again.

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From your question I take it you are assuming the hive has AFB? Judi has done the right thing in notifying the authorities of her concerns so it would be wise to wait on the results first and then for her to take their advice on what needs to be done.
Far better for Judi to know what the issue is and then apply the correct actions. I’m still trying to find out how far the spores can be blown on the wind or how far away her nearest hive is and if that hive is infected with AFB.
Remember she is in outback western Queensland and not in suburban Woolongong where if a hive has AFB it can be easily transferred from hive to hive by normal bee activity.
Cheers

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The Department of Agriculture have given me the name of a company who can irradiate the Flow Hive (it’s actually relatively inexpensive) and we will burn the frames, assuming it is AFB.

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Hi everyone. We received a positive lab test result for AFB yesterday :frowning: . We killed off the few bees that were left and burnt the brood frames. Next step will be to irradiate the Flow Hive.
Thanks for all your help and support. I’m not sure what we’ll do from here. I loved the whole experience (except for how it ended). Without knowing exactly how it happened, it’s hard to gauge what the odds are of it happening again…

Judi

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May I start by sending you a huge hug? :hugs:

Thank you so much for the update. You are very impressive in the honesty, integrity and responsiveness that you have shown through this very difficult experience. I am extremely impressed. Not many beekeepers have all the qualities that you have shown in the quantities you possess. The feedback is incredibly valuable, as others can now learn from you.

AFB usually comes from bees robbing an infected hive within a mile or two of you. It is not your fault. It may happen again, but you would be unlucky if it did, as the culprit hive is probably dead now. I would talk to the Dept of Agriculture and see what they say about restarting, but I would think that you would be fine to start again in the spring unless they have objections. You may want to bleach your hive tools and gloves too, as the bacterial spores can persist for a long time on anything which has touched infected material.

Please don’t give up on bees. You will be an excellent beekeeper again if you restart, and now you have some knowledge which is very valuable, even if it doesn’t seem that way at this point. I am rooting for you to start again. :blush:

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I am so very sorry Judi. We had all obviously hoped that wouldn’t be the result. But it is encouraging to see that you identified an issue with your bees and responded swiftly and correctly - and then bit the bullet and acted fast to prevent spreading. As I have had this experience too I know how upsetting it can be. The strict regulations around managing AFB do minimise the chances of re-occurrence, but of course you can never be sure. I hope you will stick with it. I’ll PM you also. :cry: :bouquet: :honeybee:

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Really sorry about that news Judi, Given that you had just the one hive and living so remote I thought the chances of AFB there was only remotely possible. But what you did was the right thing and that happening was beyond your control.
When you want to ‘kick off’ again you only need to let me know, ok…
Regards, Peter

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