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"Friday 6 June 2003

"Today I asked the co-op to remove me from their membership list and to refund all my deposits with them, and my equity. As readers may have gathered, I am not at all impressed with the ability or philosophy of the current board nor am I at all impressed by the focus of management. I'll be writing about this in depth soon, here in this space, but I'll need time to do a good job.

"A co-op, endowed with members' money, and a good lead in the market, should not only match the returns producers can get in the market, but should also pay a profit to the members. In the past, though, as far as I know, the co-op has always -- at best -- matched the market, and often fallen short. Although I am sure the private honey packing firms manage a return to shareholders of at least several percent on sales most years, the co-ops have never AFAIK, been able to do so.

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Say Allen

I have been watching for your thoughts on this subject . Have you written this article some place?

A question I have is why is it the co-op can not turn a profit ? We have the UFA which turns a profit and other co-ops as well that generate a reasonable return ? so what is their problem ,they have a reasonable market , they buy and sell products for the honey trade which they mark-up! So are they top heavy? or poor in management skills? What are your thoughts?

PS I am still new in this industry , still watching and learning

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I haven't gotten around to it yet. I am giving them time to think before I hit them with a broadside, hoping they will smarten up.

I spend too much time writing, and the bit about the border took a lot out of me. It is too easy to fall into believing what everyone else does, and to ignore the facts.  The co-op story will take me several days -- and a lot of remembering.

I notice Capilano (an Australian co-op) has bought a Quebec base and is setting up to attack the North American market. This began with one of our co-op officers taking a trip to Australia to try to arrange an alliance.  As before, this was done without member input -- just like the decision to waste millions on a wax plant years ago.

Looks as if the trip backfired. I think the Aussies will eat BeeMaid alive.

allen

I recently accepted the position of regional apiary inspector for (X). I am seeing a lot of AFB in one county and while it is easy to identify it brings up a number of questions which are not so easy. Do you think it is easy for the beekeeper to transfer disease from hive to hive by using the same gloves or hive tool or by handling the frames and the smoker in each colony. My feeling was that spores would be not high in number on the end bars or where you would generally handle the frame so it would be hard to transfer disease where it could get into the food. I noticed however that when I found one diseased hive there was a good chance that the one behind it or on the next pallet was likely to be infected. Apiaries were uninfected or had several infected hives. They never had just one hive infected. I have been very careful to flame my tool and wear throwaway gloves when inspecting but I noticed that the commercial beekeepers don't bother and they have lots of disease.

I personally never did worry about such things, since my assumption has been that in a commercial outfit, there is a background level of spores higher than what would be transferred. We also always used OTC medication to keep AFB from expressing itself. In an isolated hobby operation where no medication is being used, additional care might be appropriate.  Although AFB can indeed spread though all the following, in most cases, disease is distributed through an outfit far more by moving comb and boxes from one hive to another, during splitting and other operations, than by hive tools and gloves; and robbing is a far more serious method of spread than drifting.

One commercial beekeeper claimed to use hygienic queens but I noticed hives with AFB had chalkbrood too. He claimed that it is unusual for hives with chalkbrood to also have AFB. My feeling was both diseases present themselves when the bees are slow to clean out dead brood. Certainly with chalkbrood, early removal of dying brood will remove the fungus in its vegetative stage and spores will never form to infect other larvae. What do you think?

HYG occurs with some definite frequency in any bee population, so any sizable yard of beehives will have some resistant and some susceptible hives. 

To maintain hygienic characteristics, constant selection and testing is necessary, as is scrupulous attention to detail. See http://www.honeybeeworld.com/misc/hygienic.htm. Unfortunately, commercial supplies of supposedly hygienic queens, in many cases, may prove to be very little different from queens not claimed to be hygienic, but which are raised by a knowledgeable queen breeder.  Simply rejecting hives which exhibit AFB and chalkbrood from the parent stock will increase the HYG trait to some extent in offspring and, even more importantly, reduce the frequency of most susceptible genes.  It is susceptible hives that will first exhibit a breakdown and thus contaminate the yard to the point where more resistant ones break down too.

As for AFB and chalkbrood being antagonistic, I have no idea. I believe I have seen both in the same hive. What you suggest sounds reasonable, but I don't know.

I understand AFB is a spore forming bacteria that can create billions of spores in one dead larvae. Even if Hygienic bees get to the larvae before it is dead there are probably millions of spores in the cell. If they do not remove the larvae whole then how do they prevent spreading the disease? This kind of suggests that in order to kill a larvae a large number of spores have to be fed to it. Do you think this is the case or there is something else I am missing? If I am right perhaps it is difficult to infect a colony from your gloves or hive tool.

You are quite right. Oftentimes researchers have problems infecting larvae. At other times, however at other times, AFB spreads easily. There are many factors we don't understand. If you are an inspector, though, appearances and perceptions are a huge factor, and it is important to not appear careless.

One of the things that surprises me is how in 30 colonies you will find some heavily diseased and others nearby that appear clear. Could it be that they also are diseased but are able to clear up the cells fast enough that it just appears as a somewhat spotty brood pattern?

If hygienic queens are used, they are often uneven in that ability. HYG also appears naturally, and in 30 queens from any source, there will be at least a few that are less susceptible to AFB.

I believe supers have the potential to re-infect colonies yet I noticed a commercial beekeeper take off his honey without looking to see if any hives were diseased. How did you prevent reusing supers that came off hives that had AFB. Did you inspect earlier and remove those that had disease or what?

When an antibiotic is used in spring, AFB is unable to express itself. After the brood nest has reached full size, the major risk is past until fall, assuming there is a good flow, since all brood cells in use will have held one successful larva. Any cell that has successfully raised a bee is usually OK unless contamination comes from another source, such as in infected honey that is dug out of storage during a dearth. During a flow, nectar is going up into supers and not down. Then the supers are taken off.

The area of inspection I now have has been without an inspector for years and with much disease it is going to be difficult to clean it up. I know the attitude of some in this area is that they don't want to burn their hives because they feel that AFB is in old trees, the soil etc and they are just going to get re-infected again anyhow. I welcome your input.

The soil, etc. will not cause disease. Old equipment in sheds and behind bushed may. Nonetheless, intelligent use of OTC combined with careful identification of scaled comb, along with use of queen excluders to confine the queen to brood chambers can reduce the AFB to very low levels very quickly, with minimal burning and melting.

This one commercial beekeeper said he uses hygienic bees and treated with antibiotics three times a year yet he has lots of disease. It appeared that he was throwing a lot of swarms and I wondered how often these new queens were hygienic since they were mating with whatever drones were around.

If there is one thing I know about beekeeping is that you can never believe anyone about anything. You have to go and look for yourself, and think.   95% of AFB comes from within the outfit where it is found. Good management can reduce AFB to very low levels very quickly, even in the presence of scale (not recommended, but possible).

allen

Allen's
Links
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• Windows Update
  Microsoft has new patches out again.  If you are a Windows™ user, Be sure to visit Windows Update ASAP.  Windows security problems affect more than just MSIE, however, they affect your whole system, and you won't be safe just because you use  -- for example -- Netscape.  If you have not updated for a while, you may be looking at hours of downloads, but start now, or risk serious problems later.
  You must visit Windows Update using MSIE, even if it is not your favourite browser. 
• The Road to Serfdom
• http://learnfrommymistakes.com/

I would like to wish you a good birthday!

I am a newly started amateur beekeeper in my first year, and came across your site by chance. I find the comments fascinating , particularly regarding the 'protection' by banning imports from the USA. We seem to live happily (?) with varroa, with a regime of checking and treating with apistan where needed. Some negligent keepers lose whole apiaries, but this is not common.

Keep up the good work with your site.

Best wishes

Yup, I'm 58 today.

Allen's
Links
of the Day

• Introduction and early performance of queen bees - some factors affecting success
• Oxalic acid trickling

Allen's
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Hello Mr. Allen Dick

I appreciate your work very much. Congratulations for the home page...

Is it possible to add more photos about beekeeping in it? I enjoy them a lot when you put them into diary of a beekeeper.

Regards,

Silvio - Brazil

I try to put in interesting pictures, but I am not doing much anymore.  I also have a problem if I put too many pictures in, since the pages get slow for those on telephone dialup.

Anyhow, thanks for the note.

A stack of mite boards coated with salad oil and with screens held on by elastics. Tabs made of tape identify the hive tested.  We test about 10% of the hives at random, and only test further if we see problems. Click to enlarge.

Take a test. How many adult varroa do you see in this picture?  Click to enlarge. Write me with your answer, if you like.