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Fri, 5 Jan 2007 17:54:29 -0500 |
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I hope no one got the impression that I advocated dropping all antibiotic
treatments in one season. While I am very heartened and do not doubt
Brian's success with "shake and bake" (shake bees on to new comb and burn
infected comb) I wonder if it will work as well for everybody.
I mentioned that there were some beekeepers in our study in which we could
not find a single AFB spore across hundreds of honey samples and across a
number of seasons. These beekeepers had also not seen a case of AFB for
years. Their risk of a flare-up was clearly small even in the absence of
treatments.
On the other hand, some beekeepers in our study consistently had spores in
their samples and were always coming across a low level of AFB-killed
colonies in their deadouts. I do worry that if they went "cold turkey"
to "shake and bake" (which is appropriately termed the “cold turkey shake
and bake”) that: 1) AFB cases would immediately increase, 2) their staff
would suddenly have increased demands on inspection, shaking and keeping
track of cases... and many balls would be dropped and 3) AFB levels would
increase quickly within a few years. After some finger-pointing and a
raft of expensive packages to bring numbers back up, the beekeeper would
vow to never give-up antibiotics again. This would be an unfortunate end.
Intuitively I like Lloyd's approach of using an antibiotic-transition-
period, in which comb is being renewed and diligent inspection used to
weed out high risk equipment. It reminds me of the apocryphal saying of
Dr. Shimanuki, “the best way to come off antibiotics is one apiary at a
time”... this philospohy allows for staff to gear up to the challenge and
does not put all your investment at risk immediately. This is "the
warmish turkey shake and bake" and is somewhat easier to swallow
(particularily with gravy).
I have my own experience with shaking. A smart student in our lab, Robert
Albright, mastermided a study looking at the costs and benefits of
shaking. In the study infected colonies were shaken onto foundation
during the dandilion-flow, simulating what a beekeeper could do if they
found AFB-colonies after their spring inspections. The bees were shaken
onto 9-frames of wax foundation (1) and we compared their honey production
to 2) overwintered colonies and 3) April-hived pacakges. Although the
shaken colonies did not produce as much honey as the other two groups on
the first pull, they caught up and produced as much honey on the last
three pulls. I can't remember the numbers exactly, but the shaken colonies
made 200-ish lbs, the packaged colonies 250-ish and the wintered colonies
300-ish. We figured that if we had decided to turf the AFB colonies and
bought a package to make up the loss it would have cost us ~$40. Shaking
was more profitable.
Adony
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