Should you buy known AFB-contaminated beehives?
In a word, trust your instincts and don't buy unless you are absolutely sure
you know what you are doing, and are prepared to take a lot of extra
precautions.
This year, I was given a beeyard in which AFB had appeared, but had been
declared to be eradicated last year. Guess what showed up there this spring.
If you decide to go ahead with the purchase, then I would advise you to keep
all equipment from the infected beeyard isolated from whatever other
equipment you may have, and to thoroughly wash and sterilize all your
beekeeping tools (and yourself) after any visits to that beeyard. Treat
anything that comes out of that beeyard as if it was radioactively
contaminated. If you extract supers from that yard, clean and disinfect
your extracter (Clorox will work here) before you extract supers from a clean
beeyard, and make sure you keep your supers segregated by beeyard (both
before and after extracting).
I would not treat the colonies in the yard with Terramycin, as that doesn't
kill the AFB spores. By curing the disease bacteria but leaving the spores,
infected equipment will appear to be clean. You want to find out what
equipment is infected, and what is really clean. Your whole management
scheme should be directed toward finding infected hives and equipment, and
dealing with them appropriately.
Now for the good news: AFB contaminated equipment can be decontaminated.
In Maryland, the Dept. of Agriculture has an Ethylene Dioxide (ETO)
chamber, whichs kills AFB spores and makes the equipment useful again (drawn
combs and all). The fee charged is a small fraction of the equipment
replacement cost. I have used decontaminated equipment successfully.
Hopefully Florida has such a chamber (if not, you should lobby the state
Dept. of Agriculture. You can tell them it will make the State some money
(and beekeepers will be glad to pay it).
As a guess, I would call the equipment clean if it has uninfected bees in it
for a year after the last known AFB equipment was removed from the beeyard
(this includes old boxes and other assorted stuff lying around the beeyard
edges. Remember, no Terramycin during that period.
Good luck (whatever you decide to do).
W. G. Miller
Gaithersburg, MD
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