I want some feedback from the list.  We are looking to evaluate a sensitive technique for sampling spores of the bacteria that causes AFB in honey (see a little review below).

As far as I am aware, up to now sampling for spores, in an operational way, has been restricted to drawing samples from drums of honey.  This kind of sampling is very easy to do, but provides information on strictly an operation wide basis; perhaps a little too gross scale to make disease management decisions on an apiary-level.  I would like some ideas from the members of the list about how to best sample honey on an apiary-wide basis.  I would like ideas that pull honey uniformly from each colony in the apiary and would be easy for you to incorporate in your current practices.

So far beekeepers I have talked to have come up with two ideas:

1) mark boxes from a given apiary, extract them in series and sample the honey in the sump ½ way through extracting the apiary.

2) during the spring inspection, take a syringe and partially fill it with honey from the brood nest of each colony in the apiary (or a subsample).

Any other ideas?

Here is some background on sampling honey for spores.  I look for to your clever schemes. - Adony

A recently developed complement to colony inspection is microbiological assay of honey and adult bees for P. l. larvae spores.  Protocols for sampling honey (Hansen 1984ab, Hansen and Rasmussen 1986, Shmanuki and Knox 1988, Hortnitzky and Clark 1991, Hornitzky and Nicholls 1993, Nordström and Fries 1995) and adult bees (Goodwin, Perry and Haine 1996) for spores are well developed and can detect colony infections prior to the appearance of clinical symptoms.  Preliminary studies have shown that microbiological assessment of honey can predict the risk of infection among colonies, apiaries and entire beekeeping operations.  Spores cultured from bulk honey samples obtained from 315 Australian beekeepers showed a correlation between spore concentration and the likelihood of disease or recent disease history in the beekeeper's operation  (Hornitzky and Clark 1991).  Owing to the sensitivity of the bioassay, 34% of the beekeepers in the study were made aware of AFB outbreaks that were not detected prior to being advised of the status of their honey bioassay.  Furthermore, another 23% of beekeepers in the study had bioassay results detecting spores in honey, even though no colonies showed signs of AFB.  Hansen and Rasmussen (1986) suggest that the detection of sub-clinical levels of spores from a sample of honey from an apiary can predict outbreaks of AFB a year in advance, although conclusive experimental data is lacking.
Direct sampling of spores using a bioassay also overcomes the difficulty of visually detecting disease symptoms following treatment with antibiotic, which tends to mask symptoms.
The sensitivity of detecting low level of spores in samples of honey may make it possible to conduct widespread sampling to determine the incidence of OTC-resistant P. l. larvae throughout a region.  Presently no published studies have correlated the presence of OTC-resistant P. l. larvae in a beekeeping operation to honey samples, or isolated resistant P. l. larvae from honey.  The proposed project will not only seek to employ honey sampling to determine AFB hazard among apiaries and operations, but also to determine the extent of spread of OTC-resistant P. l. larvae.


Adony Melathopoulos
Apiculture Biotechnologist
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Beaverlodge Research Farm
Box CP 29
Beaverlodge, Alberta CANADA
T0H 0C0

T +1 780 354 5130
F +1 780 354 8171