>The real take home message however, is that if you are seeing chalkbrood
at all in your hives, then the genetics of those bees are non hygienic.
It really is as simple as that.
>The solution is simple. Test for hygienic behaviour...in your
apiaries...in your nucs, and especially those hives used for breeding stock.
I am afraid I did not explain the whole situation. Number one, we were trying to start the season with clean bees, by irradiating the combs and installing packages. The Prof felt that colonies suffering from chalkbrood could not be used for his studies, that it would affect the results. Whether this is a valid point is irrelevant, that was the goal: to start with clean healthy hives and do experimental work.
Secondly, we did everything under the sun to control chalkbrood. We even tried cinnamon, dusting and in syrup. Obviously there is no point in requeening colonies with 6 week old queens, they aren't the problem. And, we couldn't requeen all the hives with supposedly hygienic stock from one source, because one of the experiments involved comparing queens from multiple sources.
The lab later went on to compare various package bee vendors' product to see how many types of pathogens were present. See: Strange, J. P., Cicciarelli, R. P., & Calderone, N. W. (2008). What’s in that package? An evaluation of quality of package honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) shipments in the United States. Journal of economic entomology, 101(3), 668-673.
Finally, if you think buying queens advertised as having "hygienic behavior" means your problems are over, you don't know beans about bees. Pure VSH lines may be super hygienic but they have low brood viability due to inbreeding. Outcrossed VSH bees have good viability but the hygienic behavior is greatly diminished. The only bees I know of that are reliably healthy are AHB, and they are illegal in NY state (other states as well).
PLB
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