CATCH THE BUZZ

News from the day-and-a-half workshop held in Beltsville this week, covered by Bee Culture Magazine. Watch this space for more updates as the data and information is sorted, sifted and presented. Only at CATCH THE BUZZ.

One of the first things to come out of the meeting was additional information on the status of frames from colonies that had experienced a CCD event. Initial observations indicated that if these frames were reused, the colonies they were added to also experieced CCD symptoms.

Jerry Hayes, State Apiarist for Florida, and Dennis vanEngelsdorp, of Penn State pointed out that it may be a very bad idea to attempt to reuse comb from CCD dead-outs until some on-going tests are completed.

At the moment, the most prudent choice may be to set this woodenware aside, and treat them for wax moth and small hive beetle as if storing supers after harvest.

In an exclusive interview with James Fischer of Bee Culture magazine at the USDA Working Group Meeting on Colony Collapse Disorder held April 23-24 in Beltsville MD, work in progress was discussed, and while results are still very tentative, they seem to show a pattern.

Preliminary results of informal tests and the experience of individual commercial beekeepers affected by CCD have shown that:

1) Taking brood boxes and supers from hives lost to CCD and placing them atop healthy hives in an attempt to "protect" the hives from wax moth or small hive beetle infestation may have been a very bad idea. In some cases, the hives that had boxes of comb from CCD dead-outs added soon began showing the symptoms of CCD themselves, and collapsed. This same scenario has been reported by several larger beekeepers, and has been witnessed in one operation firsthand by Florida State Apiarist staff.

2) In response to the problems described above, woodenware from CCD-dead-outs are being tested by placing packages on four groups of combs:

2a) One group of combs was Irradiated brood comb from dead-outs (a service available in Florida that may not be available elsewhere)

2b) Another group was brood combs fumigated with acetic acid

2c) A third group was untreated combs from honey supers only, excluding all brood comb.

2d)A fourth (control) group was untreated CCD dead-out brood comb

Preliminary results appear to show that packages placed into both irradiation and acetic acid fumigation treated brood comb and honey comb are "doing well", while the packages placed on untreated comb appear to be declining. To check further, we did a follow-up interview with David Hackenberg, whose combs and hives were used in the experiment, and his initial observation was that the differences between treated and untreated colonies was day and night, but he cautioned that the bees had not been on the comb long long enough to say for certain. Packages placed upon honey super comb are doing better than one would expect from the general experience with placing dead-out woodenware on healthy hives.

Check the MAAREC website http://maarec.cas.psu.edu for updates on this issue, as specific comb treatment recommendations should be posted within the week. Also, if you have, or thing you have experienced a CCD loss in your bees (see symptoms below), go to the CCD Survey and add your information to the growing list of beekeepers who are contributing information to this data base. You can find it at www.beesurvey.com

It is as yet still unclear which, if any, hives might start showing symptoms of CCD, but the initial impression is that the irradiated hives are not showing short-term symptoms.

Just to repeat, the primary indicator of CCD is "lots of brood, but few bees, and no dead bees in the hive". If you have a dead-out with "dead bees but no brood", you can't blame CCD.

While the experience with comb may lead one to conclude that the causative agent of CCD is a pathogen that can live on comb even after the bees die, no one wants to rule out other factors, including pesticides in the external environment as we still have many questions and still lack hard data to answer them. These investigations are ongoing.

This message sponsored by Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, www.brushymountainbeefarm.com

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