Government’s Bee Inspectors - The Good Guys!!

I am new to the Keeping of bees and I have been going along to the Dunblane and Stirling Beekeepers Association, and joining in their beginners classes which were great, as well as being easy to understand.
Last night we had a visit from Scottish Government’s Bee Inspectors, Steve Sunderland, who is the first full time inspector.
His talk was excellent, he was in the thick of the Foul Brood outbrake in Scotland last year and he was very reasuring on were it came from, how/were it spread and what is the best way to control/manage your bees to minumise the spread of any infection.

If your club/association gets the chance to have Steve along then grab it quick, he's going to be a busy man this year.

Go onto https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/index.cfm and watch for updates over the next few weeks, they should be very helpful.

Excellent to hear that Hugh. As a matter of interest, where did he say EFB came from? AFB looks like a long-established problem bubbling up again and largely ignored by beekeepers until now, but EFB is more recent epidemic which seems to have got out of control before being spotted. I'm just curious about how far Steve went with speculations about an ultimate source.

best wishes

Gavin

Hi Gavin

EFB was mostly among the commercial producers, and had probably been about for years at a low level. He said that EFB was not following the usual symptoms (i.e. EFB in sealed brood!!) and it was not showing up on the test kits they tried!! So if you have any suspicions, get the inspectors involved.

AFB was different; it was amongst the amateur beekeepers and could be traced back to one probable source, which was an old collection of hives dating back 10-20 years. Which was passed onto other people by various means and spread the infection?

The big news was Infection Control, keep a clean Hive and keep all your equipment clean, use disposable gloves and disinfect as you go from hive to hive.

Hi Gavin ,I was just talking to an equipment supplier in Somerset who I'm going to see on Monday and he tells me they've had a large outbreak of EFB .The inspectors used shook swarming as a control but burnt small colonies deeming them not worth saving as they were so small.Seems this winter is having quite a negative effect on the bees.No reports of AFB though.

Hugh, I missed the Tuesday meeting - it sounds like a good one though! Interesting to hear what Steve had to say though.

One thing that Steve said about EFB was it can be there one inspection and gone the next!

The infection is in the Bee gut, therefore a Good nectar flow and feeding of the young bees, and they can survive the infection because there is enough food for bee and infection.
But, the bee will be weakened by it and therefore less able to survive other attacks, and serve the hive as it should, and the general health of the hive will deteriorate.

Thanks Hugh.

I've been speculating in some of my talks that the start of the EFB outbreak might have been around 5 years ago or a few more, but not a lot more than that. There are clues which indicate roughly where and to some extent when it may have got underway, but I doubt that Steve would want to discuss it in public. The worrying thing about it is that it isn't always obvious when present and that spring is often the time to see it. No-one was looking for it last spring.

AFB goes back into the mists of time and is quite different. I'd be surprised if Steve said that there was one ultimate source of AFB (EFB, yes) but perhaps he was talking about one particular area such as the outbreak near Inverness.

There is a lot about the foulbrood outbreaks here if you are interested:

http://www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk.../diseases.html