Recently-retired from a full working career of commercial beekeeping, but still tending “about 20” beehives, Hawke’s Bay apiarist John Berry reflects on his history with American foulbrood (AFB). From identifying and managing the bacterial disease of honey bee brood, to some of the colourful characters met along the way while doing so, there’s plenty to impart.
By John Berry
When I was young it was just called foul brood. There was even a period when we were officially told to call it BL, or the bacillus larvae, as it was thought the name foul brood gave a negative impression.
It was a serious problem then just as it is now.
I got my first hive which I shared with my brother when I was eight. We burnt that hive when I was nine. 100% AFB is not a good start to a beekeeping career, but it is a very valuable lesson.
I have found hundreds of infected hives over the years working for my family business Arataki Honey, doing official inspection work, and in my own hives.
Arataki always had some AFB, not because they were no good at finding and destroying it, but because they were constantly buying up other beekeepers' hives and gear and while I am sure that they did buy some outfits that had no AFB, I personally can’t remember any that didn’t have some.
The first hives I ever brought when I was about 16 were from a guy that had been pretty keen and had several quite big apiaries spread around the district. I don’t know why, but he lost interest and just walked away from the hives. The ones I bought had been abandoned for several years and were clean, but some of his hives near town had been infected when abandoned and multiple neighbouring apiaries had to be destroyed including all the hives the monks ran at the mission. Nothing much has changed over the years and someone else’s neglect is still the biggest cause of the outbreaks amongst well-looked-after hives.
When I was young we had apiary inspectors. They were locally based and worked for the government, but that’s all I remember about their job. Our local inspector was called Sid and I remember one thing he told me about beekeepers. To put it into context you have to remember in those days the vast majority of them were one-man operations. Sid told me there were two types of beekeepers – the religious-type and the sex maniac-type, and that you could tell the difference from the type of reading material they had in their trucks. He reckoned that the lonely life led them in one direction or the other.
We always ran 1000-plus hives per person and never had much time for any kind reading let alone any other type of extracurricular activity. I hope I didn’t miss out on anything…
We next moved onto the era of apiary advisory officers who worked for the Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry. They actually wore many hats, but my dealing with them mostly concerned with disease control. Ted Roberts, Byron Taylor and Murray Reid were the ones I had the most to do with and they became my lifelong friends and advisers. I still miss Ted greatly.
Ted worked under the old Apiaries Act and although he was a real gentleman, if you pushed him hard enough he would push back and I once helped him burn hundreds of hives belonging to a non-compliant beekeeper.
In the 20 years that I ran hives with my brother we had 21 AFB hives and in the seven years when I ran hives alone I had another 10.
Where did they all come from?
Well, for the first few years we had a smattering and we are pretty sure they came from old excluders which had come from another beekeeper. In those days we only used them to separate the two brood boxes when requeening in the autumn. Giving them all a full AFB treatment in the paraffin plant (160°C for 10 minutes) solved that problem. After that there was only one hive that I have no idea where it came from. So, that is three probably from contaminated excluders; two from scorched boxes; 24 from neighbouring beekeepers who had known infections and that one lonely hive that I have no idea.
The scorched boxes is an interesting one. Until recently I thought they must’ve come from hives that Arataki had bought over the years, but my mother informs me that she remembers my father scorching boxes when they were first married. This practice has been illegal for longer than I have been alive and for good reason. My guess is the contaminated boxes were in excess of 40 years old and possibly quite a bit older. We never had many of them and after getting AFB in hives with scorched boxes we burnt every single one we found.
In 14 of those 27 years we had no infections and by far the worst was 2020 when I burnt seven hives from one apiary. I notified the management agency straightaway and dead and robbed out hives were found in a nearby apiary. I still don’t know who those hives belonged to or exactly where they were. I would love to take a civil action to recover my costs. I do however understand why such information is confidential.
I’m not perfect. I have made mistakes with AFB. One day many years ago I was bringing an absolutely chocka four story hive home from Coromandel and I didn’t rope it down well enough (we didn’t have load straps in those days). It smashed all over the road. Fortunately, we were the only beekeeper up there in those days and there were no hives anywhere close. I cleaned it up as well as I could. Another time I was trying to burn a six high stack of AFB and it just wouldn’t light. I tried a bit of extra petrol and blew the bloody things to pieces. My mate who was watching said that I disappeared in a ball of flames. I was very lucky to only get singed. There were bits of hive spread nearly 10m in every direction.
Have I ever missed an AFB? In 50 years, I’m sure I have.
Nobody is perfect.
So, how do I control AFB?
Unless I know there’s a problem in an apiary, I only do a quick check of one frame of brood which I take from the centre of the brood nest. I am not overly concerned if I miss a very light infection as I will pick it up next time before it has much chance to spread. I believe it is much more effective to do a quick check every time than to do one or two complete brood checks a year. My hives get checked on average about 10 times a year.
You really need to look at at least one frame of brood anyway to assess what the queen is doing.
I feed frames of honey back to my hives. We have always done this and I know it’s frowned upon, but if it’s clean it’s fine and, if it’s not, then your extracted frames will be just as big of a disease risk. I regularly even up hives by swapping frames of brood, but I never take anything from a hive without checking for disease.
I never use untreated second-hand gear.
I teach other beekeepers how to identify and destroy AFB. It helps.
I am ultra careful and do much fuller brood cheeks for two years in any apiary with an AFB history.
So, what has changed in the way that I control AFB from when I first started?
In my own hives, almost nothing, except that we now use petrol to kill hives and in the old days we used a spoonful of granular cyanide which was kept in a 5lb honey tin (probably with a honey label on it!).
I now understand a lot more about the science of AFB spread, but I really don’t do anything differently because what I was taught all those years ago by my grandfather and father still works. However, everyone should be aware about the new Foster Method tests for AFB from dnature. You should still be able to detect AFB without them, but they can be a very useful tool and especially so in the case of a rob-out event. In that instance they can be used to identify highly infected hives before they become clinical. This reduces both your risk and the ongoing work involved in destroying hives multiple times for one incursion. If you really must buy second-hand gear, then a few swabs could also save you a lot of grief in the long run.
I have also taught hundreds of people how to find and eliminate AFB from their hives both before and after DECA came along. And if you’re wondering, I had to sit my DECA as did my father. It didn’t matter how experienced you were and I agreed with that ruling. I certainly knew plenty of experienced beekeepers who were not good at controlling AFB.
I observed over the years that, no matter how well I taught, it still takes time and experience for people to really understand AFB and these days I tend to concentrate on teaching what healthy brood looks like and what to do when you find something that isn’t healthy. That being, call someone who knows what they are doing – unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who only think they know what they’re doing.
Healthy brood is after all what you see most of the time, but if you never see chalkbrood, sacbrood, drone layer brood et cetera in your hives, then the chances are you won’t see AFB when and if you get it.
Shake the majority of bees off the frame. Absolutely you should look for sunken slightly darker brood cells with irregular perforations, but also look for normal looking brood which hasn’t emerged when everything around it has. Uncap the worst looking cell on the frame. If you do this gently with a hivetool you can leave the exposed brood unharmed and it will be fine. As long as you see a healthy pupae looking back at you, that’s all you need to see. If you are learning it would probably pay to look for the worst half dozen on each side of the frame you’re inspecting and you can also scratch the caps off a line of brood using the corner of your hivetool.
Apparently it happens, but I have never seen AFB in drone brood, so only check worker brood. There is a very good app for diagnosing anything that doesn’t look right. Remember that most hobbyists and some commercial beekeepers go through their entire lives without ever having a problem with AFB. I hope most of you will never become an expert like I am, but you should all learn to be experts at what healthy brood looks like.
Ultimately I believe the secret to eliminating AFB in your own outfit is to find it before you spread it.
To do that you have to find it and that requires looking for it, recognising it and surprisingly, acknowledging it. I have known many beekeepers who fail on this third step. They look, they see something they don’t like and they put the frame back in the hive without further checking. I have felt the urge to do this myself. It is insidious and not uncommon.
If you miss a case of AFB and the infected gear you took off gets spread throughout your outfit, then that is when you have a real problem.
Dr Mark Goodwin is quite right when he says that AFB is not that easy to spread… Unfortunately, there are some beekeepers out there that have become experts.
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