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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Brian Fredericksen <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 4 Jan 2007 19:25:24 -0500
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A little history, about 2/3's of  my 300 colonies are in used equipment I 
purchased from other beekeepers. 

I quit "preventative" TM applications 4 seasons ago and went to a 
shake and bake approach. 

I should also mention during this time (last 4 years) I gradually took 
over 150 hives from a mentor who used TM religiously for 20 years or 
more and had plenty of FB in his hives. 

Initially we just burn any real obvious FB frames/colonies as we took 
over the hives in spring or unwrapped our own. The other bad actors 
would flare up in May and June during buildup and those we would 
shake into clean equipment and bake (burn) the old. 

I'm still fighting the battle in a few yards where a flare up occurs mostly 
during spring buildup but over all my incidence of FB is way down from 
the time period before I went cold turkey on antibiotics . 

When we have a large number, say 10-20 shake and bake hives put 
back together we would treat them with TM and move all of them to a 
"sick" yard to isolate the problem hives. I'd say about 1/4 of the shake 
and bake hives had a reoccurence the rest did not. . 

I am now a firm believer that cold turkey is the way to go along with 
shake and bake and an isolation approach.. 

I have even had some success in reusing comb from a foul brood hive 
in situations where a newer deep with newer comb had been used for 
a short time period on top of what turned out to be an infected hive 
body  after a split was made. We'd toss the real bad hive body and 
frames and cherry pick the combs in the newer deep, meaning toss 
the brood comb with infected larvae  but leave the end frames with 
honey. So what I'm saying is you can get by without  tossing every 
single frame in a double deep hive in certain situations. 

I figure the loss of equipment is made up by the fact that a higher 
percentage of my colonies are producing hives rather then coasting 
several dozen worthless FB hives through the season with TM 
treatments and no production and just prolonging the inevitable burn 
pile.

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