Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[mischief]

Hi,
I am wondering what the level of AFB is in the UK.
I was given to understand that this is not a big problem in your country and am wondering if this is true.

If so, what did UK beeks adopt as strategy to combat this?

The reason I ask is that in New Zealand, it is still, after all these years, a big issue.

If you dont have a problem with this then I am thinking that we need to deal with this in a similar/same manner than you have done.

[catchercradle]

The strategy used certainly in mainstream bee keeping as opposed to natural/balanced bee keeping is that colonies with it are destroyed and equipment burned.

There certainly have been outbreaks within a few miles of me and subsequent inspections from the seasonal bee inspector. On one occasion we were all clear and on a more recent occasion, I was told that there was no need for an inspection as we were not within the distance where all colonies needed to be inspected.

[Barbara]

I just did a quick search on Beebase which is the Government run website and was surprised at how many cases of AFB there have been in the past 17 years. It's not as easy to obtain the info as I had hoped as the data for 1999-2017 is all clumped together. I was assuming that it would be just 2 or 3 cases a year but the overall table suggests it is higher. That said my own county which admittedly is only small has had only one notified case during that period and Northumberland which is the adjacent county and one of the largest in the country and most rural, has had just 5 cases in all that time, so it seems my part of the world is less susceptible to outbreaks for some reason....perhaps the rural nature of the landscape. Interestingly though there was a significantly and quite surprisingly high incidence in Scotland, which is obviously also mostly rural.
Odd that there should be incidences down south and up north, but an area in the middle that has very little problems.

As catchecradle say's the official line is to destroy infected colonies and burn equipment and inspect hives within a 10 mile radius. Unfortunately, inspecting hives can leave them vulnerable to contracting the virus so it's not an ideal situation and some people are keen for alternative methods of detection to be pursued (like sniffer dogs) to negate the need for opening up healthy colonies in an area that is already at risk.

[madasafish]

[catchercradle]

Here in Cambridgeshire, the last major outbreak was from a jam factory which left a container with imported honey open which led to lots of bees going there for the free meal. There was also a recent case of bees bought from Hampshire and following the sale the seller found AFB in his hives and notified the buyer and beebase. That was the last time my hives were inspected by the local bee inspector.