Anne, I have heard of a lot of chalkbrood here in the PacNW this year...presumably an artifact of our very warm winter and spring (big reproduction, lots of swarm control splits) followed by a cool and rainy June (alas during our one big nectar flow, the blackberry). Small colonies, bad weather, chilled brood?

I too had a visit from the chalkbrood: three colonies all descended from the same queen. Did I inadvertently spread chalkbrood infected materials when making the splits from the mother hive (which was the first CB case later)? Or is this line genetically predisposed to falling victim to chalkbrood?

There are no remedies for chalkbrood: this is a shame. It is a fungal disease and we have systemic antifungals for all kinds of plants and animals. Surely an antifungal drench for honey bees cannot be an insoluable issue?? Any eager beaver grad students out there looking for a project?? Let's get a project on the front burner!

So your options are:

1. The traditional approach is to do a shook swarm. Create a stack of clean, bare equipment of a size intended to crowd the bees. Brush every single bee from the chalkbrood colony into the clean equipment. The colony loses all their stores and brood, but should leave the chalkbrood behind. The traditional advice is to requeen from another line as well.

2. There is a study out of Egypt indicating thymol can be of benefit. I tried thymovar strips but do not think they helped much. Maybe thymol in a syrup base, sprayed onto the bees to force ingestion? Note: a friend suggested trying oregano oil as it is used in naturopathic treatments as an antifungal...no idea if it is safe for bees.

The photo you attached does not look like chalkbrood. Perhaps live larvae can elongate and get through small grids? The larvae look more sacbrood-like, but I have never seen larvae on the sticky board that look remotely like these, although Small Hive Beetle larvae can be quite large.

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