Springbank Honey forced to burn thousands of beehives

Springbank Honey forced to burn thousands of beehives after American foulbrood disease found

saw this over on social media. of course the rest of the story is not being shared, or at least i havn't seen it.
as afb management doesn't just test supers for the hell of it, no doubt they have found a lot of infected hives or high spore count in honey.
more than likely this is a case of beekeepers shortcutting beekeeping and let afb spread throughout their hives over a number of years (from experience it takes many years to get to this stage).
now its biting them in the rear but they blame everyone else instead.

sadly this is not new and is being repeated all over nz (i know of a couple myself), which in turn spreads to you.
double edge sword here is that its easy for afb to hide behind varroa problems, which we have a lot of. so you need to keep on top of both.

 

[Bron]

I bought over 200 hives back in 2018, and stupid enough didn’t check for AFB when took possession. After 1 season of harvest and split, AFB has spread out cross most of my apiaries. Bob was the AP2 who inspected all my hives, and we worked together to turn the situation around within 12 months. Yes, lots of boxes and bees burnt, it was devastating at the time. However, without doing all those, I would be out of business by now.

As bad as my situation was, AFB across all apiaries, the Agency didn’t get close to my warehouse and stored gears. Instead we were working together keeping an eye on the development. So I’m guessing that Steve Brown’s case is a lot worse than mine…..

Thank you for sharing your story. It shows that the AFBPMS works.

It’s actually really important to the on going survival of our industry that we find a way to work through what is a difficult time. It’s good that most of us have united behind the AFBPMA, we rail at inactivity, I know my submissions have been, honest, in the extreme. We are kinda entering the last ’men’ standing situation. Some of us have been fortunate to come this far and still have a business.

We need to use the resources we have available, the AFBPMS, is one of them. Following our DECA is another. Do what you have to. If you don’t, then don’t have a problem with the AFBPMA telling you to do it. Definitely don’t go out there in the world crying because you didn’t.

I personally don’t see a problem with a drop in hive numbers. I’d sleep better at night if I believed that exiting beekeepers were behaving in the best interest of the industry with disposal/sale of gear & hives. We probably have another year of readjustment before the level of AFB drops. Some people have a proven record of not managing their hives to an industry standard. These are the ones we really don’t wanna see rising again.

I love my bees, I love my job. I’m off to share what I do this week with a group of shiny, bright eyed six year olds.

 

[tristan]

I bought over 200 hives back in 2018, and stupid enough didn’t check for AFB when took possession. After 1 season of harvest and split, AFB has spread out cross most of my apiaries. Bob was the AP2 who inspected all my hives, and we worked together to turn the situation around within 12 months. Yes, lots of boxes and bees burnt, it was devastating at the time. However, without doing all those, I would be out of business by now.

As bad as my situation was, AFB across all apiaries, the Agency didn’t get close to my warehouse and stored gears. Instead we were working together keeping an eye on the development. So I’m guessing that Steve Brown’s case is a lot worse than mine…..

good story.
it was a bad situation but with good practices you got on top of it quickly and it didn't spiral out of control. also i bet you learnt some very valuable lessons out of that, which makes you a much better beekeeper.

this is why i suspect browns case is many years in the making, not getting on top of the situation. probably due to the same poor practices that caused the issue in the first place, which is typical of these sorts of cases.

 

[Grant]

A crappy topic, but nothing like a bit of controversy to welcome back to a few old faces. Hello all.

 

[John B]

voting for the management agency as a whole other topic that has never been satisfactorily answered.
The big change to AFB management in the last few years is the ordering of destruction of contaminated\possibly contaminated stored gear. This was not possible under the AFB PMP as only clinical cases could be ordered destroyed. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the destruction of stored gear is done under the bio security act. This is what is upsetting a lot of people but as I have said before I am yet to see a case where it didn't seem to be justified. I for one used to get heartily sick of bad beekeepers continually having hives inspected and burnt for them while having a seemingly endless supply of contaminated gear which enabled them to continue beekeeping and spreading AFB to their neighbours for years and even decades.
PPB is the root cause of all AFB at some point.
Catching AFB is not unusual or a sin.
Failing to identify it and then allowing infected hives to die and be robbed out is in my opinion a sin and while I agree with no compensation being paid for destroyed hives I would like to see heavy fines available for those whose grossly neglected hives cause the destruction of hives belonging to innocent neighbours.

 

[Alastair]

As bad as my situation was, AFB across all apiaries, the Agency didn’t get close to my warehouse and stored gears. Instead we were working together keeping an eye on the development.

That, Cheng, is because you cooperated in a sensible way, and you and Bob were able to problem solve together and harmoniously.

A totally different situation to Steven Brown, who was uncooperative in every way he could be, even trying to ban inspectors looking at his gear, and hiding hives. Eventually he had to be forced, kicking and screaming, to do what any sensible beekeeper would have done WAY before, before things got anywhere near as bad as they are for him now.

Sad to say, but my view is the industry will be better off if he goes out of business. That's because his attitude is so appallingly bad, I don't think he will deal with future AFB properly, and will still be obstructionist trying to stop the inspectors from helping him also.

 

[Alastair]

The Biosecurity Act, and the Pest Management Plan that was made with it, were never intended to be paragons of democratic virtue...

Nick you wrote your post so well.

It has become apparent that some people think they should have the right to appeal, to delay, to vote for the leadership rather than have appointed experts, etc.

Even in our NZ Democracy which is a very good one, not every little thing has to be voted for. Was the principle of your children's school voted for by the parents? Of course not. Sometimes things just work better that way. The buck does stop at a voted for authority higher up the chain though.

 

[Jessej]

Big yawn from this neck of the world where the wine is cheap and the Lorus eaters are happy….
The industry is going around in circles… lotsa huiee and little doeee….

 

[Jessej]

So as I walk the ancient trails of Europe… my mind wanders back over a past life… history and reflection on bees and the battle it was to keep them alive.
The AFB program has been with us since the day I bought my first hives over thirty years ago. The first week I found two AFB… rang the guy who I had purchased them from… who told me he had never had a problem with AFB….
Scroll forward thirty something years…. Springbank honey have had a big burn up… we had a big burn up when we ‘dumped’ our hives on a falling market…
I considered myself to have been ve an expert at finding the stuff, but somehow we never got on top of it… perhaps because we could never break the reinfection merrygo round….when we never really knew who our neighbours were.
And the answer….?
The agency is possibly a necessary stop gap measure of control…. The firebrigade before science comes to the rescue with cheap testing ir a vaccine… or we join the real world and buy a bucket of antiB.
The catchcry for being Antibuotic free was that we’d garner a better price on the world market… but thirty years later we are still at the lower end of the payscale for our commodity…
Perhaos it’s time to face reality….

 

[tristan]

The catch cry for being Antibiotic free was that we’d garner a better price on the world market… but thirty years later we are still at the lower end of the pay scale for our commodity…

except that nz is the single highest earner in the world from exporting honey, by a long way.
yet we are going broke.
going down the road of having to buy antibiotics would add another cost and make that even worse.
the lack of profit is not caused by afb.

 

[Alastair]

To me the use of antibiotics in beehives is not just about our export markets. The bigger problem is that they don't work.

In the USA for example antibiotics used to be the main means of control, and even there it was never about eradication, just control. A treadmill that once the beekeeper was on, he could never get off.

However the use of antibiotics in the USA has now been banned in almost all States, and burning is now the only allowed method of dealing with infected hives, other than in some cases where they can be irradiated. Same goes in a lot of other countries. For us to go with antibiotics would be a step backwards, and in direct conflict with the way the rest of the world is going.

Time for proponents of antibiotics for NZ beehives to do a little research, wake up, and perhaps face reality.....

Specially if they are telling people they are organic 🙄.

 

[Alastair]

James even where you are the use of antibiotics in beehives is being phased out. Unlike the old days when a UK beekeeper could just rock into a supply store and buy any he wanted, it can now only be done under the supervision of a veterinarian.

 

[Jessej]

I know. It is late spring here in southern portugal. There are wild flowers for Africa… and yet hardly a bee in sight. Most of the beekeepers have 20 or 30 hives… and the honey is expensive. I shall do some research into AFB…..

 

[Bron]

A crappy topic, but nothing like a bit of controversy to welcome back to a few old faces. Hello all.

👀 hi, been a while, couldn’t help myself!

 

[wainuiwaves]

Thanks to everyone that has shared their views in this thread. I’m originally from Chile, and our practices there are so different from how it’s done here in New Zealand. It’s refreshing to read common sense and informed opinions above, and I’m sharing what I’m learning with my friends back home.

I used to be a cherry producer and had 20 hives/ha. for pollination. I lost 70 hives during a hot summer to severe wasp attacks, and the only thing I heard about AFB from a fellow beekeeper was: “If a hive smells like fish, you are in trouble”. No plan whatsoever from the authorities, the beekeeper was responsible for figuring how to deal with it, which obviously meant massive losses. We were lucky to never have had AFB, or maybe we never detected it, and Varroa and the wasps were faster. The pressure from general malpractice meant swimming against the current all the time.

Reading about Mr. Brown’s case reminds me of South America: The majority of beekeepers are great people, honest and hard working, but their goodness was affected by the occasional opinionated and arrogant people basically winging it, and then justifying their poor decisions with lies and exaggeration when the problems arised, trying to shift the blame and back paddle out of the hole they dug trying to shave production costs.

 

[John B]

Stephen claims that he was forced to burn 2000 brand-new boxes that had never been near a beehive and if that is the case then it would clearlyy be an abuse of power by those involved with ordering the destruction.
I can only imagine that they had been filled up with contaminated combs which would be enough to make them infected but if they truly were brand-new and uncontaminated except by being in the same shed then we will have something to worry about.
Reportedly, two out of six tests came back positive and with no way of knowing how these tests were done and how much gear was swabbed for each test , it does on the face of it look like a very strict interpretation of the law which could be a worry for all of us as there will be very few commercial beekeepers they did not have some gear with at least a very low number of spores.
A nonclinical hive even though it tests positive does not have to be destroyed, yet stored boxes and frames had to be burnt despite the majority being negative.
There has to be a lot more going on in the background.
As an aside, if the gear was heavily contaminated then it had no monetary value.

 

[Alastair]

Since all his videos go on about there being no clinical infections in his stored boxes in the shed, I asked him how many hives did he have with clinical infections. As this has never had a mention. The reply was "there were no clinical infections in the shed".
Since this avoided the question, I pointed out I was not asking about the shed, I was asking about clinical infections in his hives. To date, the question has not been answered.

IE, there is a side of the story not being told.

 

[Jessej]

I’m with you Alistair…. If brand new boxes have ben burnt… whats with the powerhouse that makes the honey… mummy…???

 

[tristan]

it does on the face of it look like a very strict interpretation of the law which could be a worry for all of us as there will be very few commercial beekeepers they did not have some gear with at least a very low number of spores.

i don't think thats actually the case. @JohnF

plus you need to be doing something pretty bad for them to even want to test in the first place. there will be years of failure at hive level well before they start testing supers.

 

[NickWallingford]

From what I can tell this was a direct consequence of being a high-risk beekeeping operation, one where "...inspection of their beehives by an authorised person confirms clinical AFB in greater than or equal to 10% of a beekeeper’s hives and at least three AFB cases are detected." Even if you have 10% or more AFB you can *make a plan*, and negotiate a (revised) DECA with the Mgmt Agency, to describe how you will change management practices to turn it around. I would expect variations of more and/or better inspections, quarantining of yards or hives, etc, and some serious record-keeping to back it all up. But that might be more problematic if trust is an issue and/or previous non-compliance is repeated and serious.

 

[tristan]

From what I can tell this was a direct consequence of being a high-risk beekeeping operation, one where "...inspection of their beehives by an authorised person confirms clinical AFB in greater than or equal to 10% of a beekeeper’s hives and at least three AFB cases are detected." Even if you have 10% or more AFB you can *make a plan*, and negotiate a (revised) DECA with the Mgmt Agency, to describe how you will change management practices to turn it around. I would expect variations of more and/or better inspections, quarantining of yards or hives, etc, and some serious record-keeping to back it all up. But that might be more problematic if trust is an issue and/or previous non-compliance is repeated and serious.

that really only applies to the semi's or beginners, people who haven't gotten up to speed yet. not big operations that have been operating for decades.

at this sort of size operation, all those "changes in management practice's" should have already been in place from their early days.
any poor practices are typically well and truly systemic. hence why afb is a beekeeper disease and often the problem never goes away until the beekeeper does. odds of recovery without causing problems to every one else are very very slim.