SHB Contamination of Stored Super

[PhilK]

Hi all,

We have some honey supers stored and noted that one of them has SHB larva contamination. Some of the honey is fermented and moderately slimed and there are some active larvae around.

Is our only option to trash all of the honey from this super? I was thinking of hosing the frames to remove larvae/slime/affected honey and placing the super on top of a strong colony to be cleaned and repaired, but don't want to do the wrong thing. Will this work?

Cheers

[eltalia]

I'd be looking forward Phil in also asking what prevention methods are an optoon.

Cheers.

Bill

[GSF]

If any of my frames are slimed I put them out for the bees to rob.

[Acebird]

What I have done is take the box away from my hives and let the bees rob out the good honey.  If there were areas of heavy infestation I would scrap to half depth of the cells with the angled part of the hive tool.  The rain naturally washed out the comb.  Of course this would be risky in a dearth.  This may take a few weeks.
When there are few bees visiting the box it will be pretty empty of usable honey and most the junk is gone.  The year before I tried this I took the advice of others and put the box on a very strong hive and I lost the hive.  Never again.

[eltalia]

If any of my frames are slimed I put them out for the bees to rob.

Not allowed under regs here in Aussie.

Cheers.

Bill

[Acebird]

Not allowed under regs here in Aussie.

Does that include this:

placing the super on top of a strong colony to be cleaned and repaired

[eltalia]

Not allowed under regs here in Aussie.

Does that include this:

placing the super on top of a strong colony to be cleaned and repaired

... it does IF they have  been in the sun as GSF describes.
Further, I would wager the regs will be refined to include stripping to wood,
autoclaving - or some other approved pretreat - and restrung as new frames.
ANY solids removed to bee burnt.
Our biosecurity guys tend to get a tad excited when a new (?) tasking gets
airtime. Some of us (local) BK head for the hills when they get wound up!
     : chuckles:

BTW... just whom belongs to that quote you cite?

Compliments.


Bill

[Acebird]

The OP

[Acebird]

Question:  How are your biosecurity guys ever going to know if someone did as GSF suggested?

[BeeMaster2]

My wife and I just returned from Pennsylvania where my father-in-law lives. He had had his hives inspected and they were certified SMB and  mite free 2 weeks before. Yea, I question it also. He had pulled 2 medium Supers and 2 deep frames. We helped him pull the remaining 2 Supers and then start extracting. I noticed that one of the deep frames looked like it was slimed. It smelled okay but looked slimed to me. I asked him about it and he insisted it was ok. We extracted it with half of the other Supers.
I could not taste or detect any problems with the honey.
Jim

[eltalia]

The OP

... riiiight. Be a good chap and play nice by including context, hey?
At the moment what Phil described is acceptable under Qld. State regs,
if maybe poor practice.
I'll stand correction as regs are dynamic and I am not a clockwatcher.

As to your question (paraphrased) "how would they know".
Just one of a few options;
In Qld. and some other Australian States the many authorities who guard
us from ourselves [/cue cynicism] have far more reaching powers than the
copper running around town in a patrol car. Then there is a layer of
Federal control over that...and as just one probabilty - note wording -
the Feds now have access to our metadata, and with that the right to
access personal information unchallenged.
So, in that scenario many of the posts I have read would attract visitors at
home, in the event of a biosecurity event being escalated to priority.
No?
Well you will not see me posting "aint been in me longLang in six months"
as comment on folks as yourself touting your beekeeping sees different.

Compliments.


Bill

[jalentour]

What I have done is take the box away from my hives and let the bees rob out the good honey.  If there were areas of heavy infestation I would scrap to half depth of the cells with the angled part of the hive tool.  The rain naturally washed out the comb.  Of course this would be risky in a dearth.  This may take a few weeks.
When there are few bees visiting the box it will be pretty empty of usable honey and most the junk is gone.  The year before I tried this I took the advice of others and put the box on a very strong hive and I lost the hive.  Never again.

Always reduce the entrance a few days when you do that.  I reduce to one inch and cut off the upper....always.  Couple days later set back to normal.

[BeeMaster2]

If it were mine, I would remove any frames that I can see slimed and extract the rest.
In the case of my father in laws Supers, only the one deep frame was affected, probably because it came from a brood box and not a super.
I have placed 4 slimed brood frames (this year from my observation hive) on a strong hive and the cleaned them up. If the worms were crawling all over the frame, I would not have done it. At that point it is too late and the worms would over run the hive.
Jim

[Acebird]

Always reduce the entrance a few days when you do that.  I reduce to one inch and cut off the upper....always.  Couple days later set back to normal.

How does reducing the entrance help?

[PhilK]

I've managed to have a look at the frames myself (was going on what I was told) and they aren't really that bad. 90% capped honey looks OK with some mildly fermented smelling honey around the outsides of most frames. A few small grubs wriggling around only. Hosed them all and put them on top of a very strong hive (see my other post about this hive) so will see what happens.