At 08:01 AM 4/17/96 -0500, you wrote:
To continue the thread:
 
Dick Allen writes: >Without going into great detail again, I'll just say
that the furor
>over AFB and other diseases in North America seems to be to a large
>extent promoted by the new equipment purveyors and government
>agencies who used them to justify their own existence.
 
Years ago when I started in bees, there were alot of fruit growers trying to
keep their own bees. Some growers bees were full of foulbrood, and to boot
the bees were in new equipment. I took over many hives and dusted the lot of
them every week until it cleared up. That was over 12 years ago.
 
Dick Allen: We see a little foulbrood from time to time (in less than 1% of our
>hives) but I have to tell you that it is always due to the fact that
>in a large outfit sometimes groups of hives are missed in medicating --
>sometimes for long periods of time.
 
Indeed, we have the same situation. Less than 1% of our hives will show any
AFB. Some of our helpers have never seen any in our hives since they worked
here. I'm still looking for an opportunity to show them ropy larvae and scale.
 
Dick Allen: We do not scorch boxes, we do not boil frames, and quite frankly,
>we don't worry about the odd cell of scale when making up brood
>chambers,  We try to look at all the combs, but there is always some
>scale that hides out under pollen or honey, or is just plain missed.
>We do have to work on cloudy days sometimes.
 
We dust a couple of times in the spring, in addition to a terra patty. We
found that for us, the terra patty wasn't enough. We need to dust a little too.
 
For us, AFB is a non-problem. It's last on the list of our troubles.
 
Kirk
when you get lemons, make lemonade.....
 
Kirk Jones
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