Sid Pullinger wrote:
>
> <<<<<You paint a pretty grim picture.  On ocasion, some of my supers get
> stored in a place where the moisture content is a bit too high and they
> end up moldy.  There's no reason for me to expect disease in this case,
> since they didn't come from dying colonies.  The bees clean them up just
> fine.>>>>>
> Will the writer of the above  please read my letter again. I made no
> reference to stored combs, an entirely different situation.  My letter
> concerned the re-use of old mouldy combs, in store for a year, and from a
> colony which died out, cause unknown.  The cause might have been varroa, in
> which case no danger in re-use, but it could have been a contagious disease:
> the beekeeper did not know the reason for the colony's collapse.  Starting a
> new colony with such combs, almost certainly containing nosema and chalk
> brood spores if nothing worse, is not my idea of good beekeeping  and in my
> view is asking for trouble.  Incidentally,far more work for the bees than
> drawing out new foundation.            Sid P.
 
No argument from me when there is reason to suspect AFB.  I haven't seen
much nosema or chalkbrood since I moved from Seattle to central
California 7 years ago, so I'll defer to others on that.  I just got the
strong impression from your writing that you discourage using moldy comb
at all.  It appears that I missed your qualifier.  I no longer have the
note for reference.
 
There are lots of new beekeepers on this list and I was afraid some
might toss out perfectly good comb just because it has mold on it.
I wanted to make the point that there are times when mold is not a big
enough problem to warrant throwing out the comb.  When you have no
reason to suspect that disease was adversely affecting the bees from
which you took the comb, and when the bees you are giving it to are
strong and hardy, mold is not a problem.
 
In fact the presence of mold is coincidental to disease problems.  The
absence of mold is no assurance that the comb is safe either.  Each of
the diseases has characteristic signs which new beekeepers should learn
to recognize as early as possible.
 
Michael Reddell
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http://www.hotcity.com/~mwr