It appears the majority of my hives have varying degrees of EFB. Spotty brood, some smoky looking dead larva, doesn't rope when "match sticked", etc. It's bee unseasonably cool and moist here for the past 3 weeks. Most of what I have read says let it run it course and the bees will bounce back. In my now 6 years, I've not knowing dealt with this before so I was slow on the uptake of what was happening. The unfortunate thing is we're heading straight into peak flow and the populations of about 1/3 of my hives are well below where they should be. Some of my queens are Minnesota hygienic, some are homegrown mutts, and others are store bought Italians as well as a couple from Colorado but none seem immune. Is this a fluke, or can I expect this to repeat itself from now on every spring?
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Sounds odd. i believe that the answer is in 3 weeks cold period. Bees get not enough pollen and they are under nurished. Emerged bees needs lots pollen too.
You see when you look into hive, do they have pollen in combs.
Pollen patty or some protein product would be good.
Yeast +soyaflour+irradiated pollen mixture is good. +vitamins and fructose. fructose keeps patty moist. If they rusch ove patty, they are protein hungry.
Quote from: D Coates on May 31, 2011, 04:30:37 PM
Most of what I have read says let it run it course and the bees will bounce back. In my now 6 years, I've not knowing dealt with this before so I was slow on the uptake of what was happening.
That has been my experience. We have EFB every year at just about this time. We ignore it and it goes away.
Finski,
I did see pollen on the outer frames but little with the brood. I wasn't really looking though. Would protein starvation create spotty brood? In one hive there is even an area of about 100 cells with sunken cappings. When I tore a few open they were indeed dead and a bee even ran over and began pulling the dead out of the cell. This is when I really began to examine what's going on. Would protein starvation account for dead capped cells too? None of my nucs that have had continual syrup on them are exibiting these syptoms
Frameshift,
It appears that it will seriously affect my honey production in a negative way. Time will tell but I'm not real optimistic that'll they'll bounce back in time to catch the flow.
Quote from: D Coates on May 31, 2011, 05:36:21 PM
Would protein starvation account for dead capped cells too? None of my nucs that have had continual syrup on them are exibiting these syptoms
I don't think the bees would cap a brood cell until it is ready to be sealed. That would mean that it had enough of the nutrients that it needs. If they did not have enough pollen to feed a larva, they would cannibalize the larva and use its nutrients elsewhere. In any case, since you have available pollen in the same box, you don't have a pollen shortage.
Drew, hit us up with some pics of your brood if you get the chance.
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Like framechift says, bees eate part on larvae when they are not able to feed them.
So it becomes spotty brood area. It happens to me in early spring when they do not get pollen from nature.
But capped brood are dead, that is rare.
chalk brood works like that but it is easy to identifye.
Quote from: AllenF on May 31, 2011, 09:55:27 PM
Drew, hit us up with some pics of your brood if you get the chance.
We'll do. I'll roll back into them this weekend. The capped dead brood from the one frame should be all removed by then but they might not. The patterns look very spotty and there are the random dead, smokey looking, larva in various staged of desication in the frame. The pattern was so poor at first I thought it was a failing queen but when I saw it in other hives I started getting concerned. All of my queens are under 1 year of age and I know some will will fail but not this many.
Quotesmokey looking, larva in various staged of desication in the frame.
when they finally pull them, are they dried up? that sounds more like chalkbrood.
http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1680&bih=881&q=chalkbrood&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g-s1g2&aql=&oq= (http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1680&bih=881&q=chalkbrood&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g-s1g2&aql=&oq=)
EFB larvae look more like snot to me...the larvae "melt", losing their shape, and darken a little but are still cream-colored, not brown like AFB. And the sunken cappings are not as prominent.
Pictures would help.
If this is mild EFB, it will clear on its own as the weather improves. You could also try providing some feed, which might help them bounce back faster.
Quote from: caticind on June 01, 2011, 03:42:49 PM
EFB larvae look more like snot to me...the larvae "melt", losing their shape, and darken a little but are still cream-colored, not brown like AFB. And the sunken cappings are not as prominent.
Pictures would help.
If this is mild EFB, it will clear on its own as the weather improves. You could also try providing some feed, which might help them bounce back faster.
I does look like snot from someone with a head cold in some of the cells. What is mild EFB versus serious or severe? Can it kill a hive? At this point brood frames that are normally jammed with capped brood are about 60% of normal strength. but the queens seem to be laying everywhere. The drone frames seem to be taking it the hardest though. I'd say they are about 30% normal strength. No DWV, and the mites are very low. The honey flow is definately on right now, it's the upper 80's the black berry is peaking and hairy vetch is kicking in.
it just wont catch up give it a dose of tylan 3times a week apart
Mild, when I've seen it, was a couple of dozen affected larvae per frame-side, and no signs of the disease after a month. Severe would be to the point where enough larvae are infected that they can't replenish their numbers. 40% of larvae dying is pretty bad if it continues for long. It is rare for EFB to kill a hive outright (since it doesn't affect the adult bees). They almost always recover on their own, but if a large proportion of larvae die and the population gets really low, then opportunistic pests move in and finish the job. If you start seeing chilled brood, SHB, wax moth or other consequences of not having enough bees, then it's an emergency.
It is a very good sign that your queens are laying well, but a bit worrying that this is continuing through the flow. How long have you been seeing these symptoms?
I don't recommend using antibiotics for EFB, no matter how bad it gets. The bacterial spores are present in most hives most of the time, and healthy bees ought to be able to cope. Treating may allow this hive to recover but will not solve the underlying problem of susceptible bees, and may add to resistance of EFB to the treatments. If there are environmental factors weakening the hives, that you can fix.
What's your yard set-up like? Is it normally shady and damp? Have the bees been foraging through the lousy weather? Do they have any capped stores right now? Is there anything else that distinguishes the affected hives from the healthy ones?
I've got 15 hives in a long "S" about 20 yards from a fence row on top of a hill. Hives 6-11 are showing it the worst with #8 having it so bad that I took pictures of the frames http://s196.photobucket.com/albums/aa190/Drew454/European%20Foul%20Brood/ (http://s196.photobucket.com/albums/aa190/Drew454/European%20Foul%20Brood/) After that I found the queen, removed her with 2 frames of brood and 2 frames of shaken bees and put them in a nuc. I brought them home and are feeding them to see what this will do (Homegrown Fall 2010 queen). I shrank the remainder of the hive down to 1 deep (was 2 deeps and a super). It made a full deep population wise. Sunday I dropped a very strong queenright 10 frame swarm that had 7 frames of capped brood on top in a newspaper combine. I'll check on them today.
I opted not to treat as it's too late and I've got honey flow on. This weekend there were eggs everywhere in all the hives and only #8 still had dead in the cells. Of the 9 nucs (5 and 10 frame) I have only one has shown a slight case of EFB. All of them are kept in at least 50% shade.
Judging by your pictures, yes, it is definitely EFB, but not as bad a case as I expected from your descriptions. The "really bad" photo had some pretty scattershot brood, but I didn't see many more melties than in the other picture (which resembles what I see in my own hives some springs). Due to the angle, I can't tell whether the empty cells are mostly full of eggs or just recently cleared of dead. If there are plenty of eggs, then even this hive is well on its way to recovery.
I'd say you're doing the right thing - support the population until the bees can clear the infection, and feed as needed. If the number of melty dead in the cells continues to decline, then it's over.
It can seem strange to have them suddenly suffer from this disease and just as suddenly recover on their own, but it's pretty common. One of my hives had three weeks of EFB in late May last year. I fed for a week and did nothing else - they rebounded so hard that I had to split the hive at the end of June and both halves made it through the winter with flying colors.
I appreciate the response. I hadn't run across this before so this has been a learning experience. Yea the quantity of "melted" brood is about the same on both frames. The bad frame just showed how many young had been killed off. I thought it looks awful and I really don't look forward to seeing a bad case. There are eggs or 2-3 day old larva in many of the cells that appear empty. How do I avoid this in the future or is this just a lump you learn to take when it shows up?
You can't really avoid it. The bacteria are always present in the hive in small amounts and you can never get rid of them entirely, but a healthy colony keeps them from multiplying. Just like most people have staph bacteria on their skin, but normally you don't get infected.
When you see EFB symptoms, that means that something else is weakening the colony. The question is: what? Can be lack of forage (solution: feed for a little while), wet cold weather (solution: wait and hope), or really bad genetics (solution: requeen).
Some people (and most catalogs) promote "preventative treatment" with antibiotics. I think this is a terrible idea. No matter how much you treat, you will never eradicate every EFB spore. For a long time you might be able to keep the level so low that you don't see any symptoms. But all that time you are killing off friendly bacteria in the hive that help keep EFB in check, and breeding for EFB that can resist the antibiotics. This is the same way that we got MRSA (resistant staph).
You will probably see EFB again in the future, and you just have to take it. It usually doesn't put much of a dent in the buildup, no matter how worrying it looks. But if you notice that particular hives are getting bad cases every year, I would suggest requeening them with a daughter of a stronger hive.