Alternatives to burning

[John B]

I assisted with the destruction of 20 hives today (not mine), that's 60 boxes of plastic frames and the smoke was dreadful. While I fully's support the need to destroy gear like this the burning of hives and especially plastic ones is becoming a lot harder to do without causing problems with neighbours and councils. Surely in this day and age we can come up with a better more ecologically friendly method of disposal.
What do people think of the possibility of getting infected gear deep buried at landfills. I know there is the argument of what if it was ever dug up again but you could probably say the same for a burn hole when the hive you are burning has a lot of honey on it as there is no way that all the honey burns.
Anyway I would appreciate people's thoughts on this.

 

[Mark Lawrence]

Will be interesting to see how the new Bioforme (plant based) frames burn. They would need to come down in price but it may not be as bad as plastic when burnt.
And it would be great for plastic frames to be banned - I only have some because there was no foundation available when I needed some frames.

 

[tristan]

trouble with landfill is people will scavenge the stuff out and reuse it.
we used to get that with tv's we threw out that where uneconomic to repair. someone would bring it back ibn the next week. we had to resort to smashing them up. plus there is often ferals hanging around, checking out what boxes you throw out and trying to get your home address.
digging out old fames and selling them for a few dollars is easy done.

best thing is probably a high temp incinerator. its only blowing black smoke because its not burning properly.
a custom built incinerator in every area people can take hives to.

 

[John B]

Our local landfill apparently has supervised burial for dangerous goods where a hole is dug , filled with the goods and then immediately filled in.

 

[Grant]

could they be incinerated rather than burned? Bear with me on that one. The crematorium would have a high temp oven that would produce less smoke due to the higher temperature.

 

[yesbut]

Someone recently told me 18kg of lpg go up the spout for each cadaver.

 

[Josh]

There’s a refuse to energy plant proposed for Waimate… that would be a win win for disposing of these hives.

 

[mischief]

My first thought was- most landfills are not geared up to deal with diseased bee products and so they are not immediately buried...based on one of our local dumps that is more than a container that gets removed once a week.... my closest one is just that, a container that people toss stuff in which is then removed....and way too close to my 'apiary' !!!!
That would/might lead to problems whereby local bees home in on tasty treats, being the opportunists that they are and worst still, they would not realise that its a contaminated product......so not good

 

[John B]

How many hives died from varroa last autumn in the North Island. My guess is between 30 and 50,000.
Some almost those will get repopulated but how many will just be abandoned. The smoke from burning just 20 was horrific and the thought of burning thousands is just not going to go down well with anybody in this day and age. I have twice in my life been involved with burning hundreds of hives and I know of one occasion when 1000 were burnt, but that was before plastic. Maybe if you live way out in the sticks you would get away with it but town has moved around us now and I think very soon we will have to stop burning.
I like the idea of them being burnt in an electricity producing plant but whatever system is used it is vital that bees have no contact with the infected material ever.

 

[Bron]

Maybe someone should contemplate this as a business.

 

[yesbut]

Maybe someone should contemplate this as a business.

So your next load of AFB might be required to be transported to a Waste Energy plant in South Canterbury...paid for by ???

 

[Mummzie]

Maybe someone should contemplate this as a business.

transported to a Waste Energy plant in South Canterbury...

Proposed Waste energy plant isn't it? The nimbys haven't got started yet.
Totally agree we should be recycling the energy from our waste, While we wait for it to be built what happens to the plastic hives?
Maybe its time to change from Elimination and learn to live with it? That way with a quick scrub, the hives can be re-used (and I shudder as I type this)

Or would the beekeeping community accept banning plastic hive components in the interests of the environment?

 

[bighands]

scrape the wax off the frames wash them and send them up to Auckland to the guy making plastic posts out of recycled plastic. The frames would have to be clean and wrapped in plastic so no spread of disease.

 

[Mark Lawrence]

Proposed Waste energy plant isn't it? The nimbys haven't got started yet.
Totally agree we should be recycling the energy from our waste, While we wait for it to be built what happens to the plastic hives?
Maybe its time to change from Elimination and learn to live with it? That way with a quick scrub, the hives can be re-used (and I shudder as I type this)

Or would the beekeeping community accept banning plastic hive components in the interests of the environment?

I would be happy with the ban. We have done it for plastic bags.

 

[yesbut]

I would be happy with the ban. We have done it for plastic bags.

Absolutely yes.

 

[James]

Um.... er ... we are trialling a new plastic disopsal method ......

 

[Mummzie]

a new plastic disopsal method ...

mice?

 

[James]

mice?

Uh huh .... i guess they must be hungry too.
One feeder was totally demolished.

 

[Dennis Crowley]

There’s a refuse to energy plant proposed for Waimate… that would be a win win for disposing of these hives.

We could burn the plastic to create energy to power the die machines that make plastic frames

 

[Bee Real]

scrape the wax off the frames wash them and send them up to Auckland to the guy making plastic posts out of recycled plastic. The frames would have to be clean and wrapped in plastic so no spread of disease.

It is illegal to move/transfer ownership of afb infected material.