Hugh

What About Hygiene???

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Hugh
, 08-04-2010 at 01:01 PM (9263 Views)
I am new to this Keeping Bees madness, and the one thing that I have noticed from the start of becoming interested is the lack of hygiene and possible cross-contamination that beekeeper indulge in.
I have been making homemade wine for years and the importance of hygiene is paramount. Now I am not talking full noddy suit and police forensics standards, but I have seen hive equipment sold or passed on. Old frames reused and old stores from dead hives reused in new nukes.
Now that is a recipe for failure if I did the same thing in wine making, the cross contamination possibilities are very high, just not worth the loss.

Is it time for beekeepers to change their ways and stop the reuse of old equipment, and the spread of infection?

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  1. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Hugh.
    I am a winemaker as well.
    I made about 40 gallons of apple wine and 15 of pear last Autumn.
    That was another 50+ kilos of sugar on top of the 100+ that went to the bees last year.

    Bee equipment can be reused subject to various caveats.

    The big worry is AFB as it makes bacterial spores which are extremely resilient and can remain viable for decades.

    For most of the other bee ailments, scorching equipment with a blowtorch should get rid of the nasties.
    Obviously you can't do this with frames and wax so the best way to clean them up is to expose them to 80% acetic acid for a week.
    To do this, you put a brood box on a solid floor inside a binbag in order to seal it up. The frames to be fumigated are then put inside the brood box and an eke or a super is placed above it. About 100ml of acetic acid is placed directly above the frames in a container such as a margerine tub which has something absorbant inside it like as a piece of old sponge. Then put a lid on, seal it all up and leave for a week. The acetic fumes are heavier than air and as it evaporates it will fill the interior of the brood box and kill things like nosema spores very effectively. I did this earlier this afternoon with two boxes full of old frames. You need to be careful with the acid as it is strong stuff.