ChalkBrood

[Neils]

The grotty hive seems to be struggling a bit with Varroa and now has significant quantities of chalk brood which I'm wondering whether might be related as it's a recent development over the past few weeks.

Given the time of year I'm tempted to put off doing anything about it until spring. The combs are into their second year so I was intending to bailey change it onto new comb next spring anyway though I'm more inclined to consider a shook swarm instead.

I've done another round of Drone brood culling on this colony to try and keep it vaguely under control until the supers come off, but it's a definite candidate for requeening in the spring if there was any shadow of a doubt before.

[The Drone Ranger]

Chalkbrood tips welcome
Its one of those problems in which the advice to breed from your own stock seems to conflict with the recommended "cure" which is to requeen with a resistant strain

[Adam]

I have never had it; However I suspect that varroa treatment as soon as you can will help the colony no-end. I believe that OMF's are helpful - I assume you have no mite board inand you're on mesh floors?

[The Drone Ranger]

I have never had it; However I suspect that varroa treatment as soon as you can will help the colony no-end. I believe that OMF's are helpful - I assume you have no mite board inand you're on mesh floors?

Adam
Glad to here you haven't had it
how about your bees
There is some anectdotal evidence that shortage of nectar is a factor and that feeding sugar syrup helps
Eric McArthur had a short article recommending this in the SBA mag some time back
Paynes I think were selling some sticks which were supposed to help but the main ingredient was just thymol so I have my doubts about its efficacy
Lots of bee research going on but they only spend money on the sexy CCD projects not the dificult old boring ones

[Jimbo]

In my limit experience I have found that chalk brood usually sorts itself as it gets warmer and nectar starts to flow. So Eric may be right by saying feeding sugar can help. What I have noticed in one colony when I did a split there was insufficient bees to cover the brood and I got some chilled brood that looks a little like chalk brood. Again it sorted itself out when the number of bees increased

[The Drone Ranger]

Has anyone heard of a treatment that works ?

[Jon]

Has anyone heard of a treatment that works ?

Keeping a colony really strong and well fed certainty minimises chalkbrood and I have read in various places that it has a genetic component thus the requeening advice.
I see it in damp weather or when I have made a split without enough bees to incubate the brood properly.
Like a lot of bee stuff, you see more of it when they are under some kind of stress.

[Neils]

This is my "strongest" colony, 9 14x12 frames of brood, 5 supers going. But they have shown signs of not coping that well with varroa and I've been culling drone brood regularly as a result. The Chalk Brood is a recent development, but lack of bees/forage it certainly isn't and I wonder whether the varroa is the stress factor.

[Adam]

Adam
Glad to here you haven't had it I couldn't possibly comment!
how about your bees
There is some anectdotal evidence that shortage of nectar is a factor and that feeding sugar syrup helps
Eric McArthur had a short article recommending this in the SBA mag some time back
Paynes I think were selling some sticks which were supposed to help but the main ingredient was just thymol so I have my doubts about its efficacy
Lots of bee research going on but they only spend money on the sexy CCD projects not the dificult old boring ones

I guess the boring hive problems are manageable.

I wonder about the re-queening of chalk-brood colonies. I recall reading about this too however how much is anecdotal and how much is fact? - for example if we re-queen a colony we will probably break the brood cycle; maybe feed as well and a week passes and some income comes into the hive and hey-presto the chalk brood has gone! Nothing to do with the queen that's just been killed!

[The Drone Ranger]

The thing about chalkbrood is that it makes checking for serious disease so much more difficult
If you look at the AFB pics Gavin posted you would have no difficulty spotting the problem if it wasn't for the chalkbrood also present
Last year I had a serious troll through the internet and came to the conclusion that there was no treatment
There were plenty crazy "cures" like putting a ripe banana on the hive floor etc but no sucessful science based treatment.
Australian sites showed that they had had a go at finding something down under but failed
Contrast this with 1.8 million investigating possible CCD causes here in Britain where we havent experienced the problem