I have repeatedly headr now retired scientist, and arguably the top
proponent of TM use during most of his career and now one of the strongest
proponents to get off the TM treadmill lecture on the topic.  Dr. H.R.
Shimanuki recommends cold turkey, a yard at a time.  The first yard to pick
is the yard closest to home, mainly because that is the yard you are most
able to watch the closest.  If there are any AFB outbreaks the
recommendation is the usual elimination by fire.

I have been looking very closely at the AFB issue recently, as I just wrote
an article for my local association newsletter on the topic.  Getting off
the treadmill is a lofty goal.  When I first started keeping bees I vowed no
chemicals of ANY KIND in my hives.  That worked for the first six or seven
years, but the year AFB hit I lost 5 out of 6 hives.  Ahh, the good ol' days
when I kept 6 hives.  Anyway, since then I have been on the TM treadmill.  I
have not had the courage to follow Shim's advice to start with my closest
yard.

The thing that bothers me most about AFB is if you have a vegetative case,
all the books, and the State of New York dictate that you kill the bees and
burn the hive.  This treatment is rather severe.  Talk about the cure
killing the patient!  TM has been a wonderful treatment for over 5 decades.
Unfortunately, resistence will continue to increase, and this generation of
beekeepers will pay the price for the almost free ride enjoyed by the
beekeepers of the last half century.

If one looks back to the first half of the 20th century, treating AFB
provided room for saving one's bees.  Frames were still burned, but the bees
were spared by shaking them into new boxes fitted with frames of foundation.
The fresh start broke the cycle of AFB by separating the bees (and brood)
from the Paenibacillus larvae larvae spores.  I searched the BEE-L archives
for the specifics of shaking the bees, but all I came up with in previous
discussions was a general wondering where the method was originally
described.  I was able to track it down at the digitized E.F. Phillips
Beekeeping Collection at Mann Library (Cornell University) at:
http://bees.library.cornell.edu/  The full description can be found in
_Beekeeping_ by Everett Franklin Phillips, (1878-1951), pages 404-408.
Special note should be made about the cautions of the potential for robbing
during the shaking of the bees.

Interestingly enough, Phillips wrote _Beekeeping_ long before the
introduction of Oxytetracycline!  It seems that Oxytet, like the Langstroth
hive itself, is both godsend and bane, a double edge sword.  Modern
beekeeping could not exist without the moveable frame hive.  Yet it is these
same moveable frames that harbor so much that fouls our bees, be it AFB
spores or build up of chemical residues.  There is a lot to look at in this
observation, far more than I will write here.

So, how to get off the TM treadmill.  Well, one way is to go cold turkey and
be prepared to burn baby, burn!  More preferable would be shake it baby,
shake it!  You'll be off the treadmill and you'll have renewed frames.

Aaron Morris - thinking shake your booty!

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