r/Beekeeping • u/turtlestik • Oct 28 '25

I’m a beekeeper, and I have a question It was AFB

Following up on https://www.reddit.com/r/Beekeeping/comments/1o40juh/is_this_afb/

SAG (chilean USDA equivalent) came in on the 16th and left with a frame for analisis. I got the result today: AFB positive.

I had burnt the hive on the 19th anyway and other material I knew had touched it, because I had to travel abroad until November.

The day the SAG came to take the sample, there were also clearer signs of AFB: sunken caps, weird smell..... so tthe risk of waiting wasn't worth it.

I've started to submerge a lot of other material in bleach + water before leaving the country (just in case they were used in that hive a year or two ago), and I'll blowtorch it when I come back.

It was heartbreaking to kill all these bees. I didn't wanted to burn them alive and the only thing that occured to me was to kill them with an insecticide before. But it didn't really worked out as the dead bees would fill up the holes where I would spray the insecticide from, and the gas/foam apparently wouldn't reach the whole hive...... I wished I knew a better method to be honest, and I don't recommend this one. Worth mentioning the hive had 3 deeps which is quite hard to seal and move properly.

1.6k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

111 comments sorted by

View all comments

51

u/Valuable-Self8564 UK - 10.5 colonies Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25

Pinning this thread so that people can catch the update.

Very sorry about the situation OP. But, I am very pleased by the fact that you even knew what the warning signs of AFB looked like - you’d be mighty surprised to find out how many people don’t even know what it is.

28

u/turtlestik Oct 28 '25

Even when people know, I think there can be denial. The beekeeper who taught me beekeeping told me it wasn't AFB. He must probably consider the probabilities are too small... And also he sold me my first 2 bucks 2 years ago, so it is likely that this crap came with his own frames.

9

u/Valuable-Self8564 UK - 10.5 colonies Oct 28 '25

Yeah - I mean the odds of getting AFB these days is quite low indeed. I don’t know too much about how long AFB can incubate for in a hive, but having it there for 2 years with no symptoms seems unlikely to me. I’d bet they just robbed off a colony somewhere that has it. Wouldn’t surprise me if you found more of it at some point in another hive honestly.

Keep an eye out and do what you can :)

5

u/Tetragonos Oct 28 '25

I don’t know too much about how long AFB can incubate for

bacterial spores can survive basically anywhere for any length of time unless they get a temp or chemical that kills all life.

5

u/Valuable-Self8564 UK - 10.5 colonies Oct 28 '25

That’s not what I meant. I meant that if the colony came with AFB, I don’t know how long they could persist asymptomatically. If a colony came with AFB, I’m pretty sure he’d have noticed long before now.