While it is an older and known disease of bee’s, it is every bit as bad in it’s own way as CCD.
The hives need to be burnt, bees included, sadly, at best bees destroyed and Hives Irradiated, in some countries.
It is spread in Honey and pollen, and will transfer into wild populations too, so all round it can cause massive losses in harvests and for native flora and fauna too.
South Africa has had it before, but a long time ago. They seem to have no emergency plans or training for such problems.
The long delay from finding a problem, reporting, diagnosis and action, and now inertia, as what to do, means they have quite possibly waited too long to be able to keep it in a proscribed area.
In some countries Terramycin is used, It must be extremely small doses and very carefully applied. The heat and Humidity in Africa will make it unreliable, and the scarcity of Antibiotics for humans, let alone animal use, along with counterfeit drugs makes it a dicey solution.
Australian standards are so low in tolerance for it, that most beekeepers simply burn the affected hives, as the Honey and Pollen are likely to be refused for processing anyway.
It will be interesting to find out , if? they ever do? just how it managed to get into the country as in theory, if not practice, all honey and bee products should have been irradiated on entry. Yuk!
American Brood Bee Disease Spreads in South Africa (Update1) – Bloomberg.com
The outbreak of American Foul Brood (AFB) | For Africa
the scary thing here is the absence of advice for apiarists as to control methods, and the volume of small keepers who will not want to kill the hives. Understandably they need the food and the money, but they will have neither if it wipes the hives out.
The only issue becomes time, does nature do it slowly, or they take initiative now? This will also be a huge loss following from the crops that are bee pollinated, a really sad turn of events in a struggling agricultural sector.
Tags: Add new tag, Bees
Sherry, Mason bees are native to NTH Hemisphere, The heat and humidity in African areas , let alone the impact on Africas own native bees, would be an issue.
I would guess Africa possibly has its own similar species.
We do have ground dwelling native bees here too.
To the best of my knowledge , and I may be wrong? as Mason bees are not in the Apis family – but, they may also be affected by the virus, I couldn,t find any info as they are not a commercial bee info is scarce. My mentor has a massive tome on bee diseases I will see what he has and add info I find.:-)
AFF and EFB have quite a few strains and are a world wide problem.
If we had mason bees here I would happily keep some, but they would die in our 40C+ summers I think.
They should try using MASON bees. They don’t produce honey but
are much better at pollinating than honey bees.