Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is John Hill and I'm president of the British Bee Veterinary Association. And I would really just like to talk to you today about one of the most serious diseases that affect bees, and that is known as American brood AFB.

It sounds a very strange, title to be called foul, but it is in fact a very old term and it is sort of stuck with it, which I will explain presently. So American foul brood, it is it is a bacterial disease, a disease caused by a bacterium called Paibacillus larva. And it is a condition that is really found worldwide in temperate and subtropical countries, usually.

And really has been documented since ancient times, with references to or descriptions made by people say like Aristotle. The name originates really from where it was first described. So it is a global disease, but it was first described in the United States by Cheshire and Chain in 1885.

And hence it's called American. There is another related condition called European fibroid, which is a different bacteria. And it again is so named because it was first described in Europe.

The name foul relates to the infected colony smell, though this is very often a result of a variety of secondary invaders, such as Paybacillus alvei. So in fact, very often a pure culture of pain bacillus larva of AFB will in fact not cause a smell, usually. So this is the bacillus.

It tends to gather in small chains and is in fact found or or stained up with carbal fusion. And so we look at it, say, under the microscope, that's about a multiplication of 400 or magnification of 400. So the paintobacillus larvae, it is a spore forming bacteria, and this is a very important property of this particular bacteria.

And it has a vegetative state and a spore state. So other bacteria which in fact would fall into this category would say be tetanus and anthrax, as they're also spore forming. And these spores, but like seeds, they are very resistant to heat, cold, humidity, desiccation, acid, alkali, disinfectants, and time.

These spores have been known to survive for 70 years on stored beekeeping equipment, so they're very resilient. It comes, say to the vegetative forms that tends to be in long slender rods with rounded ends. They vary from 2.5 to 5 microns in length and 0.5 microns in width.

Spores are a bit a little bit more oval from 1.3 by 0.6 microns.

Now AFB symptoms. Now the almost you could say the cycle of how this works is that the spores are in fact fed to very young larvae, because the nurse bees are taking them food and they put food into the cell and in fact, If the nurse bees have been contaminated with the spores, they will feed them then in the brewed food or the or the royal jelly into the larva. They're ingested by the larva.

They go into the larva stomach and in the stomach, they in fact germinate into the vegetative form. And this germination takes place, and they in fact in the lumina they got they produced in very, very large numbers. And say in the mid gas of lumen, and then in fact the bacillus then breaches the epithelium of the of the of the ventriculars as we call it, which is the stomach of the larva, and it moves then through the epithelium and vades into what we call the hemocele, which is where hemolymph is.

Hemolymph is the B equivalent of blood. And in fact, then the it then starts to in this vegetative farm starts to multiply at a great rate and is effectively causing a septicemia. And this is what actually brings about larval death.

And at that point is that the larva cadaver starts in fact, then to disintegrate. And it turns initially into a reddish brown goo. And at that point is that the is that the the back thebacillus starts then to go back into the spore form.

And it is the transmission of spores through the nerves bees will then move them on to other cells and to infect other larvae. Now, what are the terrible things really about this. In fact, is that the cat larva die in the cells.

And it tends to be is that for most of the American fowl brood larvae that are infected with larvae, they tend to die after the cell has been capped with wax for that the bees will cap it in preparation for metamorphosis. So one of the one of the signs of this is that the, the, the cells instead of having a nice dome shaped, biscuit coloured capping over it, it will tend to sink, become a bit more greasy looking and the capping sunk and also, may indeed have perforations. So the dead larvae starts to turn reddish brown and then into a black rubbery scale.

And when it gets down to the scale, this scale adheres very strongly to the wall of the cell and and can in fact hold up to 2.4 billion spores. Absolutely enormous amount.

And so it then at this point, you could tell the secondary infection, they would tend to the sulphurous horrible smell, which as I say, is very often due to secondary infection by such organisms as Bacillus alveine. So the nurse bees transmit the spores to the bee larvae in brood food. But it's only the larva, it's up to about 56 years old that are susceptible to infection.

This is really quite an odd thing, but after that, the larva appear if they if they get the bacillus to be much more resistant to the to the bacillus, and it would take a much, much bigger inoculant really to to cause infection in an older larva. So it's as I say, it's usually the larvae are only 56 years or 56 hours old. Now it only takes a very small number of spores are required to cause infections.

It could be 1015 or even less. And after, say, after 56 hours, the larvae are resistant to inspection to infection. The spores hatch into the vegetative states in the ventriculous and begin reproduction.

They penetrate the gut hypohema and enter the hemolymph, reproduce rapidly and causes septicemia, and the larval dies at the pro pupil or pupal stage. Traditionally, this occurs after the cell has been capped. One of the things that a lot of beekeepers say, oh, they went through their hive, and they found a frame with and there was seemed to be a few cells that did seem to indicate that there was an American frog brood there.

And they take this view that all I have to do is take that frame out. And, and the and the colony will be clear. And this is just not the case.

Because there is this idea that be 2.4 billion spores in one cell and the bees are moving around and they're going into the cell, they get their mouth parts contaminated, etc. Etc.

And so that just does not work. The the infection will be spread right through the whole colony. So the larvae begins to decay and turns into this reddish brown slime.

The reddish slime dries out this black scale lying across the cell. And as I say, we go back to the vegetative bacteria undergo sporulation. And each infected cell is very infectious to the whole colony.

The scale is strongly adherent to the cell wall and impossible for the workers to clear. This is important because the the workers want to try and and clean out the cell so as it'll be ready for the queen to relay. And when this amount of material is in there, the queen will not relay in that cell.

And the workers, my part, of course, are highly contaminated with the spores. So if we just have a look here at a frame of a healthy brood. So in the centre of the frame, you can see all this beautiful capped brood.

And the, the, the cappings are, as I say, slightly domed. They're this digestive biscuit colour and look very healthy indeed. And really just the edge of that, you will have the edge where my pointer is going, where the larva where the eggs will have been laid and the larva are developing.

Prior to being the cells being capped. So it's a very ordered system. And then just to the outside of the area where you would have the, the larva and and eggs and larva, you will have a layer of where these bees are, where there's likely to be pollen.

And then outside that again, this white capped areas on on this side of the frame and on the right side of the frame, that is honey. So all the food is very close for the the normal workings of of the frame for for the both the bees, the worker bees, to have food and to be able to then care for this larvae or for the cells that be just before the actual worker bees will emerge as adults. Now, we go to this particular little bit of frame, and unfortunately, it's quite different.

There are a few cells here. They're not the best, but they have a little bit of dome shaped. They're a better looking colour.

But you can see a lot of the other cells around here are the, the cells are the the cappings are sunken. Slightly greasy looking. There's a a perforation here and there.

And, and so indeed, this is just not healthy. Also, you can see an awful lot of empty cells. And again, this is one of the signs of sort of what we call a pepper pot, .

Look to, to a frame. Unfortunately, pepper pot, look can arise from other conditions, but certainly it's one thing if you see it, you would have to be thinking along the lines, could there be foul bro here. So if we have another look here again, you can see a lot of these cells, the caps have the caps have darkened and they've sunken.

And you can see a perforation here. And indeed, when you look back, you can see an awful lot of empty cells, and you can see this little quite shiny, slightly shiny area in it, and that is the black scale. So this is a very severe case here of American fo brood.

The yellow ones, with the yellow one is probably some of the cells they have actually put pollen into. Again, we go on and I'm really emphasising this, the whole idea is you have a look to see what the scale looks like because it is one of the things a lot of American, you've got to know how to diagnose it, how to see it, how to look at it, be able to identify it by visual inspection. And so they they're keeping on again, you can see an awful lot of black scale here.

And one of the features that happens sometimes is that you will get a pupil tongue will be sticking out and as when it dies, the tongue comes out and you can see that in some of the cells. And we go over to the right hand side here and again, An awful lot of cells that are sunken caps, black scale and a lot of other cells, and occasionally in the middle, you'll see healthy larva before they've been capped. And these white ones are very, are very healthy.

And I know that they're healthy because they are white, pretty white glistening almost. They are C-shaped, and they're segmented and you can see the segments here. That is a healthy larva.

However, it's in the midst of a huge amount of infection. So, it may be able to remain that. Maybe it's managed not to be infected before it was 56 hours old and it could continue.

The little inset photograph here shows a test that we do for American fog but if we suspect it. And that is we take a matchstick or or similar and we push it into a suspected cell, to round side and withdraw. And if the contents of the cell stick to the matchstick and come out as a rope.

A sticky rope, then that is very, very suggestive of American fowl bred. So I come back to this rope test, and again, a matchstick pushed into a suspect cell and withdrawn. The viscous fluid comes out in a rope with a matchstick.

And this is almost pahoonomic for AFP. And at this stage, I mean the bacteria are starting to revert to their spore form. And again, as I've got to emphasise each of these infected cells is 2.4 billion spores.

So you count the number of possibly infected cells in this photograph, that comes down to an awful lot of spores. One of the genotypes of Pennybacillus larva. Now there's two main genotypes.

There's ERIC 1 and ERIC 2 that affect colonies worldwide. There are a couple of other genotypes which are more, not much seen in the field, but more of been seen in laboratories. EIC stands for Ebacterial repetitive Ingenic.

Consensus. Now, as far as I understand, that means it's a way of using genetics to differentiate between these two strains. And I can't give you any further explanation on that for that.

So anyway, the number of larvae that die before cell capping is greater with ERIC 2 than ERIC 1. So you tend to feel, oh well they die quicker, you know, is it more serious. However, nurse bees tend to remove dead larvae if they suspect them, they will remove them and they will do that before capping.

Therefore, with Eric too. There's more going to be removed with Eric 2 than Eric 1. And this means that more larvae of EI 1 will die and disintegrate under the capping, which in worker cells happens at day 8.

Therefore, more bacilli are available to continue the infection and infect other cells. So what that ironically means is that Eric 2 is considered them more virulent than Eric, or sorry, 1 is considered more vigilent than Eric 2. Diagnosis, how do we go about diagnosis?

Well, as I say, the the the signs, the signalment, and the matchstick test are very indicative, very suspicious. The other thing is that there is now a available thing called a lateral flow test, which is a bit like in the LISA test, manufactured by a company called Vita Europe. The Vita Europe are almost like a global company now.

And they have this, this test, which is a lot of the bee inspectors will use if they're looking at suspected cases in the field. Going back to historically, then a microscopy would have been another method. There's a particular, method in which they could be stained up.

And also one of the interesting things is that when the examining them, Brownian motion for some reason is again on a slide is highly suggestive of of bee larva. There is a thing called the Holtz milk test in which sporulating Bacillus larva. Or palebacillus larva, produce high levels of proteolytic enzymes and, introducing suspect scale, into this will cause after about 20 minutes or so for the solution to turn clear.

There's a nitrate reduction test and a catalase production test, and a fluorescent antibody test. Now really these has been developed over the years, but really when it comes down to it, say, lateral flow tests or PCR would now then be much more standard, more up to-date methods of definitive diagnosis. This is really just the vita kit, which the bee, inspectors would use, .

It is actually in the UK it's really for historic reasons. Only bee inspectors are allowed to make a formal diagnosis of American fobr and prescribe antibiotics for another the related condition of a European foul. This is one of those slight ironies, .

Due to the fact is the very profession sort of bypassed to bees and in the UK and therefore arrangements were made, say is that bee inspectors would be allowed to do these particular procedures, rather than normal veterinary surgeons. And it is that they're covered by a vet in the department, I would say in DEFRA or in any of the other devolved regions. It, it is one of those sort of historical things that's there.

And it's one of the very few instances where lay people are in fact allowed to prescribe antibiotics. Really it is that the National Bee unit that's NBU, a national bee unit would prefer vet vets in private practise not to prescribe antibiotics for bees, because really most vets in, in the UK do not have any experience of bees. And I would totally agree with that.

So this is how the lateral flow test works. You, you say mix up the standard solution, you grind up some of the substance from the cell that you're suspected, you put it into the solution and you grind it up and then put it on to a lateral flow test to see indeed if you get a result. Alright, what about I mean, American fibroid is a notifiable disease, as in fact as so is European fibroid.

And so it, if you suspect it at all, then you really must inform the authorities and, and then a bee inspector will in fact come out and make a formal diagnosis. And so it, it is one of those again, funny things that really say event in private practise would not by law be allowed to make a formal diagnosis, even if you had say the the kit from from Vita and you get a positive, it still has to be done by a bee inspector. American fo brood attacks cells after the cells are seed.

I keep emphasising that, whereas in European foul brood, it's the opposite. The the larva die before the cell is capped at day 8. OK, and again, perfectly accountant sunken and greasy.

Keep emphasising this. Right, so, and again you can see the scales and how black they can look. Now, let's take this here, this particular frame, and indeed, as I say, some of the photographs I've shown before show very distinct, you know, cases of American fibr.

We take this particular frame here and on very cursory glance, you say, whoa, that looks fairly healthy. And indeed you would think, yes, well you're probably OK. But remember you're looking at a whole, a whole colony, a whole hive.

This is a snapshot of just one frame. But indeed the the gloved hand here is pointing to one cell. And really, if you look around, it doesn't pretty much the same as anybody else.

But in fact, it is starting to look a little bit darker. The domed capping is still there. You could very easily miss this because This is exactly the same frame, slightly worse photograph with the lighting and so forth.

But in fact, if I go back, you can see the cells around it are exactly the same as in this photograph. If you go to here. There you have it, a rope test.

So that cell had American fibred. So it's it's sometimes you really do have to keep a very, very sharp eye. Out for suspect cells and not be afraid to to test any cell that you think to be negative.

And the vast majority of cases you do hope that you're wrong. And really, really all that happens in the process is unfortunately, you may end up killing a perfectly healthy larva. Again, just another shot of the pre-pupil tongue in a in a particular cell.

And we're just going to keep on going here again, showing what it looks like and this would still be a very bad case. But I'm going to show us a couple of other slides of other diseases that you could mistake it for. The one on the left here is called chalk root, and this is a fungus that affects larvae.

The fungus invades them. And in fact, it turns the actual larva hard and into chalk-like. And if you've enough of these larva die of chalkbrood, you pick up the frame and shake it slightly, it rattles.

And, but that's children and it's a very common problem, very common indeed. There's another one here called sac brood. Again, this is a virus.

They've actually pulled the larva out here onto the, onto the frame and this indeed is the way it works, and it prevents a moulting process, because, say, the larvae goes through various moults and the pupa and it stops the moulting. And so the actual larva pupa die within its last sort of coat as it were. And then ends up with this particular peculiar shape that people call like a Chinese slipper, and that's called saccharine.

It's quite a common virus and it crops off from time to time. I've seen a little bit of it and, but not too much, I have to say. And again, these, this photograph at the bottom here are some of the mummies, as we call them from chalkboard, that the bees pull out of cells and drop onto the floor of the hive.

You can see some are white and they're very fresh. And if the mycelium then start to spoulate to produce spores, then the actual mummy turned black. Transmission and treatment of American fire brood.

Now I really say Adult honeybees can transmit the disease to other colonies through robbing and drifting. Robbing is where some bees will think, oh, there's an easy meal in a weaker hive beside them, so they'll go in to rob the honey, because the guard bees at the front of the entrance aren't as strong as they should be. And unfortunately, if there's more robust bees can push the way in and go in and start robbing the honey and the and the stores in the weaker hive.

So that can happen. Unfortunately, that is one way in which American fibre can spread from colony to colony. The other way is through drifting.

Drifting is really where you have a number of hides together and the the the bees go out to forage and they come back, and normally they're able to go out 2 or 3 miles, navigate themselves straight back and go straight into the hives that they came out of. However, sometimes if you've got a lot of hives in a line with their entrances close together, unfortunately, sometimes they make mistakes and they end up going into a neighbouring hive and and and and that potentially could transmit AFP that way. And it happens and that is called drifting.

The other ways, of course, it could be is that the beekeeper will say move boxes around. He's he's using tools that he's opening different houses with and can transmit it that way. And as I say, all three boxes were equipment.

the other way is through infected honey, and we emphasise this to any beekeeper under no circumstances should you ever feed honey to bees unless it's their own honey. Do not go to a supermarket and buy a jar of honey and feed it to your colony. Worst thing you can do, because very often an awful lot of of supermarket honey would in fact contain American fobrid spores because they've maybe been imported from other countries where the unfortunately incidence of American fobr could be higher.

Now within the UK, American fibre, there's really only one legal treatment option that's open to you, and that is destruction. They, if you diagnose it, they, the colony, the bees themselves must be destroyed and the contents of the of the hive must be destroyed. And the way in which this is done is that a hole is dug about 3 ft deep.

And, and towards the evening when all the bees are in fact back into the colony, you close up the entrance and you then pour in about 1/2 pint of petrol into the top of the box. And this will kill the bees very quickly, really quickly. And you then empty the contents of the hive into the pit that you're doing and set it on fire.

Now, some people decide, right, I'm not going to take a risk with the boxes and they'll put the boxes in as well. But no, the boxes can be retained because they can be sterilised. And in fact, I will show a photographs of that later on.

They can in fact be scorched the inside they be scorched with a blowtorch, and that in fact will kill the American hybrid spores. So I can move on to a little bit of history. Of, of American fire bred.

So before World War One, American foul brood was a or fobrid disease, both European and American, was extremely common in the UK. Very, very common. And it was a major scourge of of beekeepers at that time.

And then in 1906. The the a law was passed called the Bees Disease Order. And it really advised certainly is that if you had a badly infected colony, it should be destroyed.

And, but also they use a procedure called ship swarm in which you shook the bees from the really the what we describe as the dirty box and you put them into a clean box with fresh foundation, fresh comb, and do a ship swarm. And that idea is hopefully you left a huge bit of infection behind. And, and they would carry on at a pace.

Now, hook swarm procedure is not foolproof by any means. The infection can still spread on, but it does work in a reasonable percentage of cases. And that is why this procedure was adopted.

However, between the wars, although the incidents dropped, by the time the Second World War came along, unfortunately, there was still about 2000 cases a year, in, really England, Wales and Scotland. And And it was still really, really quite high, still a major scourge. So, during the war, Churchill contacted the British Beekeepers Association to see if honey production could be increased to reduce sugar imports from the United States.

And, and indeed, asked asked really what what what they could do to help bees to achieve better or good honey production. So the British Beekeepers Association came back to and said, right, we've got this terrible disease. It's a real scourge.

It would it be possible to pass legislation in which there will be a destruction order on any case. Now it seems slightly counterintuitive. You're trying to increase.

The the population of bees and here you're advocating that you should be destroying some. But in fact, it's it was for the greater benefit. So you lose some bees, but it's really for the greater benefit of the of the of the whole bee bee population in Britain.

So Churchill quickly passed the legislation and as I say, the diagnosis of AFP or and AFP meant that coloies had to be killed. And indeed during that, the war, beekeeping, increased dramatically during the war. Firstly, I hope that you had this thing of reduction disease, but also, beekeepers were allowed an extra ration of, of sugar for the bees.

And it was often said as whether or not the bees got them or whether or not it was the families got the bees, but that's neither here nor there. It worked very, very well. And really say from about, as I say, 1940 incidence of AFB, as you can see on this line, the blue line was very high.

At that time, being the bee inspectorate started in which bee inspectors were going around looking. to inspect colonies in apiies around the country. And indeed, the number of inspections increased rapidly through the war and in the post-war period.

And during that time, both the instance of AFP dropped dramatically, as you can see from the graph, and has gone right on. Right through to today, where in fact, the instance of AFP and certainly in England and Wales and Scotland is very low. It is also the same in Northern Ireland.

It's still quite a low instance, but unfortunately, Northern Ireland's got a much higher ind per number of colonies than it would be in Britain. One of the reasons being that there's no inspectorate in Southern Ireland. So, the number of inspector inspections increased and therefore it has dropped dramatically, down to a very low level.

But there, as you say, with any disease, indeed, once you get down to a very low level, it's very difficult to reduce that further. And certainly as a bee inspectors in in in Britain tend to be the ones that would in fact diagnose this rather than beekeepers themselves because they're seeing so many more colonies. So 95% of the cases that we see today of American fire but are diagnosed by the bee inspectors.

And there would be roughly about maybe 50, maybe 60 cases a year. Unfortunately, the incidence of European fibroid unfortunately has increased because it was taken out from this rigorous culling procedure in the 1960s, but bee farmers wanted to use antibiotics. And unfortunately it proved to be a retrograde step.

However, that's a different story. Now we're going to move on. What do bees do in the wild.

You know, whenever they are, living in the wild, they would normally be living in a hollow in a tree, and that they would, then how do they cope with American fire bread in the wild. And the answer to that is propolis. Propolis is what's called bee glue.

It is the resins that are picked up by, specialist bees, . From the buds of trees, or and especially in the western hemisphere or in Western Europe and in North America, it is poplar trees that they're the ones that they get, they tend to get most of the propolis from. So they, they get to pick up the resins from the trees and you can see this bee on the left.

I photograph this little sort of sort of orange or reddish orange packet on its hind legs. That's how that is propolis. And it gathers that brings on its hind leg back to the hide, then other workers will in fact help it to take that off.

And they use workers to use propolis to to cover any areas where there might be a slight crack, or in fact they will line the hollow in a tree with propolis to stop any further decay because propolis is antimicrobial. It will stop bacteria, fungi, moles, anything. And so it tends to sterilise the inside of the colony, of the of the actual the hive.

So as the bees can tend to live in very large numbers with less disease. And in fact, it is proper that appears to be the material that does tend to reduce American ile brood. This is a study done in, the, University of Minnesota, and really say they where there was, AFB in a colony, if there was in fact plenty of propolis in that particular hive, and they would use hives where they could artificially try and, well not artificially, but they would try and encourage the bees to make more propolis.

And in fact, where there was plenty of propolis, there was an awful lot less American fire bred. So that is a natural way in which bees had, to, to be able to cope with this particular problem. And again, this pro envelope within, say, a wild bees' nest, and you can see this photograph on the top right, you can see this entrance going into beehive.

This photograph is taken. Inside the the tree looking out. And you can see the whole entrance is covered in propolis because it acts really like a disinfection area that the bees have to walk to when they're going in and out of the colony.

So it keeps everything very clean and tidy. This problem of law also provides a sort of therapeutic defence against the thing you saw before, chalk root, that's fungus, and to American fobrid spores or pathogens. OK.

We'll not worry about the rest of what it says there, but that's the principle behind it. Now, we move on to another sort of slightly natural thing and again I'm talking here not about managed beehunds but about bees that would be in the wild, in hollows of trees or wherever. And there are two types of moth.

There's a greater wax moth and the lesser wax moth. Two different species. One's slightly bigger than the other, but what they do is they love to eat wax.

These are actually as it comes to be the same moss that will, eat holes in your clothes in your wardrobe. But they also love beeswax. So they will go into a honeycomb hide or go into the honeycomb in a hive, and they will eat the wax and they will destroy it.

OK. You say, well, what use is that? Well, if you've got a colony in a in a in a hollow in a tree and it's made a lot of wax, and then for whatever reason, say that they got American fibred and they A colony died out.

You've got all that wax there, and it's all infected. It's full of of of of American firebrid spores. Well, the max moth will come in and they'll eat it, eat it, right?

And so really what you'll do is you'll probably get some debris at the bottom of the hollow and and maybe an awful lot of the of the actual bacillus will have been eaten and will be maybe be excreted outside. Difficult to say, but it reduces it. And therefore, if if this tree or this hollow tree is taken up by another colony of bees, then they're much less likely to encounter American fibrate.

And so to a certain extent, these moths do act as a bit like somebody that clears up the debris and gets rid of the rubbish. OK. So it's a natural biologic control of American fibrid.

So this is really what the wax moth larva looked like. They unfortunately eat everything. So if there's no bees there, they will certainly start to eat through all the wax combs.

They will eat the honey, they'll eat the pollen, they will also eat eggs. And I think occasionally small larvae, but they wouldn't tackle the adults by any means. So you have that's the, that's what they look like.

And unfortunately, they can make a bit of a mess inside the hive. So this is all been wax has been eaten, and you've got then the the mesh of the cocoons where the where the larvae pupate in. And then an awful lot of faeces as well.

So it becomes a bit of a mess, but it's a natural form of of the area being cleaned up. If it was out in the wild, unfortunately we don't beekeepers don't want to see this because it looks terrible and it's a waste of the wax they're trying to preserve. So we do have a little bit of a battle with with wax moths from time to time, but not as bad in this country, but terrible in places like southern USA or in Australia.

Now it's social immunity. So all this is really part of what we call social immunity. So the propolis in the honey bee colonies plays a subtle role in colony level immunity.

So it's, it's immunity of the colony within the hollow of the tree. It's not the actual immunity of the actual individual be. It's like a colony protection, and that's really what we're trying to get at.

So the level of of pathogens within, that's kept, say within this prolienvelope is less than what it normally would be. So, but it also means then that the, the genes are linked to the immune response within the bees do not need to be activated as much. So therefore, the whole immune system is under less pressure, therefore less energy is then put in to, to keep the immune immune response to the colony going.

So it's very much a win-win situation in that regard. Another little way in which, in which an early warning system for AFP was in fact developing in Germany and it's also done in the United States. It's a scheme really where beekeepers submit honey samples to to for counts, AFP spores to be counted.

It's done as I say in in Germany. And the whole idea is if they get an increased cell spore count, it possibly is an indicator of their clinical cases. And this is the thing is that very often there can be like a background of of of spores always within in the environment.

It's and unfortunately that is there. It does not necessarily mean because spores are present in the honey of the bees that there that they've got the clinical cases of American 5, but far from it. There can be a few spores, but disease is not initiated.

So the whole idea really is that the beekeeping kick ideas you can find that if the spore levels in his colonies is increasing, then he can really try and take measures to try and reduce it. So it does not get to a clinical state. Antibiotics and American fibroid and European fibroid in the UK.

So really antibiotics are only permitted by law for use in European fibroid, certainly not in American fibroid. OK. American fibroid, the only treatments allowed is destruction.

So the number of cases then per year where oxytetracycline is used as very small, average maybe 5 to 10 cases a year. This is for European fibroid, not American fibroid. In fact, in 2020, there were only two cases of European fibrood in England and Wales where antibiotics were used out of 800 outbreaks.

As I say, unfortunately it is a case of European y is much more common, unfortunately. And having said that, and I said that, it is a much more difficult disease to deal with, in as much as it can be seen one day and not the other. Therefore harder to diagnose.

Again, it's prescribed by the bee inspector after close consultation with the beekeeper. And this to say the national bee unit have special rights to allow the inspectors to prescribe antibiotics, and the inspectors are not vets. Antibiotics mask the symptoms.

That do not eradicate the presence of infections. And I'm going to repeat this again. Antibiotics merely mask the symptoms temporarily.

They rarely kill the infection and have no effect whatsoever against AFP spores. I'll come to this presently with regards to the United States, but this is true. The only time is a very short time where it would be effective would be during the vegetative state when when the when the AFB spores germinate in the ventriculous and then work their way through into the hemolymph of the of the larva.

And at that point, the vegetative forms would be susceptible to antibiotics. OK? But that's very short.

Once they get into spoiled state that they, they are not affected by antibiotics in any shape or form. And the rest of the UK and Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland have their own bee inspectorates. Southern Ireland unfortunately does not have a bee inspectorate.

And unfortunately, AFP and EFP are known to be higher, to be high in Southern Ireland, and unfortunately not recognised by many, many beekeepers, and this is the problem. However, the Federation of Irish Beekeeping Associations or FICA, they are in fact taking measures to improve this. And in fact, I think it's starting to be realised that they do have a bigger problem than they had actually realised.

And so which is progress, which is excellent. There is no registration of beekeepers in the UK and Ireland. It means really that there's an outbreak of of say American fowl brood in a colony.

The bee inspectors will go around and inspect all the aries within a 3 to 5 mile radius. If The trouble is, if they don't know where they are, that can be more difficult. And the bee inspectors do spend a huge amount of their time trying to find out if there's other colonies around an area that they can then get to know about.

And indeed if there is an outbreak, they know where where they can go to inspect neighbouring houses. England, Wales and Scotland do have a voluntary registration system called Beebase, and it's administrated by the National Bee Unit, and it maintained to register provides an excellent advice website. And certainly there's been encouragement over the years for all beginner beekeepers.

To to register on BA. And in fact, the hotel's actually been really very successful. And I used to think it was only a small percentage of BQs actually register on, but I understand is that the registration rate has in fact improved dramatically in recent years.

Laboratory services, that is for checking for American Firebird or for a couple of other diseases provided free of charge. Certainly in Europe, most of Europe, American fibroid is notifiable in most countries, and culling the infected colonies is a standard measure. Unfortunately, it depends really on the reporting and how vigilant the the beekeepers will be or how scrupulous they are.

Of course, they could maybe try and hide it by by trying to do a ship swarm procedure or something like that or try to get antibiotics legally. But . Unfortunately legal use, unfortunately I'm afraid can occur.

But I think hopefully it's relatively rare. In the rest of Asia, unfortunately it's a different story, across good parts of Russia and also into China. Unfortunately, the use of antibiotics is very high, and in fact they won't report it.

. And certainly at a recent what's called Apimondia, which is a world beekeeping conference. It's held in 2019 in Montreal. They had a honey show from the with entries from all around the world.

And in fact, nearly 50% of 48% of them were rejected. And one of the main reasons for it was in fact was the presence of antibiotics in the honey that was on display. And the most common antibiotics was oxycycline, but also strangely enough, chlorophenol.

Which did surprise me, I have to say. This is really just a table showing some of the notified diseases to do with the OIE, and indeed all countries really are in fact have AFB which you can see in the left hand column, are all, it's all notifiable and it varies a bit most of EFP is is. Notifiable as is also the one, the one on this on the the two right hand columns show two other notifiable diseases.

Athena tuida is the small hive beetle, and tropoleaps is another particular mite that's found in the Far East and it's horrendous. We just hope it will never come our way. In the United States, unfortunately, they went the other way and antibiotics were used regularly and prophylactically to treat fibroid colonies.

And unfortunately, it's done for a very large number of years. The beekeepers should regularly treat twice a year by dusting oxytocycline onto the frames at the top of the hive and the bees would take them down. .

And I really say some states have more control than others, but some it is, it was very, very prophylactically and just done routinely. Regulation again varies in the Canadian provinces. And unfortunately, because they were getting resistance to oxyadocycline.

Started using Tylasin and Lincomycin. And I still do have a worry about how they can rationalise the use of antibiotics which are bacteriostatic in in a condition, say my fibrid which can go into a sporulated form. I don't understand it.

Antibiotics were freely available over the counter, but in fact, in recent years, the American government have passed a law to say is that beekeepers must get a vet's prescription to acquire the antibiotics. So I have to say this does place the vets there in a much stronger position to control supply and to possibly educate beekeepers not to prophylactically treat their colonies with antibiotics. So prevention, and it's all to do with clean equipment.

We always advocate, say, a good deal of biosecurity. So if anybody is dealing with going through hives, you should say use disposable gloves, which can be peeled off and thrown away. And if you then have to, if you use marigolds or something that you're able to wash them.

And you try and to wash the gloves and the tool between each hive and that usually means carrying a bucket with washing soda in it and that will clear off the pros and and helps to and also bits of honey if it happens to be on it. The boxes can be scorched out when they're empty. This is a job that's done during the winter, where we scorch the inside of the house with a blowtorch, and that will in fact kill American hybrid spores.

We can boil the frames. The idea of frames themselves can be taken out. You take out the wax and the wire and so forth, and then you boil them in a washing soda solution.

That in fact the boiling, of course, will the wax will float off, but also remove all the propolis and any debris that's on the hive. And then anything else can be scraped off and re-boiled maybe. And once you get all of that, then you have the idea is that you could flame them if you wish.

I think at that point, if they were actually soaped though, in, in bleach, that in fact will help it. But again, you've got to remember is that bleach will only kill American fathers with spores that on the surface. If there was any debris at all in the frame, the the spores could still hide within that debris.

And so that's why you want to try and get as cleanly as possible. The other thing is, of course, if you're anyway suspicious of American fog bird or suspicious of disease in your colony, the best thing really is to just burn your frames and start the fresh and new ones because they are actually really very cheap. Washing soda soda solutions is, the best stuff to remove this debris.

And you can scrub the, the metal parts such as rescos and runners, and get rid of the pros that harbour spores. Wash off the varroa floor inserts, clean out and reseal feeders, including plastic feeders, cut out all Coleman storage sealed away from the bees until burned or rendered down. And the use of 80% acetic acid will help to kill nozema spores, and also it will kill some of the chocolate spores as well.

That's actually done by stacking supers in the winter time and Putting a little piece of cloth in and pouring 80% acetic acid onto it. It's very strong and you do that for about a week and that will in fact sterilise the the highs against sema and also against . chocolate fungus, remember, it does not kill.

African hybrid spores. We're just talking about a good cleaning process here. Right, so here we have it.

It's really just a photograph just to show that really this is really quite unacceptable. You've got a whole stack of old frames sitting out in the open, wide open to bees coming in that could, if there was any disease in there, they would take it straight back to their houses. So this is not a good a good setup.

And really the best thing to do with all of that really would probably to take it out and find a fire and burn it all. . Now you can sort of say a fringe could be stored outside as long as they're in a sealed hide boxes or sealed in plastic bags.

OK. All equipment should be be tight. In other words, they cannot get into, really stacks of equipment, no access for bees or mice and waterproof roof as possible, but you've got to really protect them against not only the elements, but also against the insects themselves, and bees robbing them out.

Now this carried over the winter months and and as I say, maybe be kept in a bee tight shed. This is the workplace. So I would like to think that the the the the photograph here on the left, this is a bee tight shed, considering everything is down a bit higgy piggly, but that would have to be.

That would be a haven for bees just to get into in the springtime and take all the The all the disease and the rubbish back to their hive if they got the opportunity. Now this very sort of happy looking gentleman here on the right is boiling the frames here. So it's a solution of washing soda in this tank and being heated by gas, and indeed the frames are coming out very clean.

No two ways about it. That's what we're looking for. And these particular beekeepers again, they've been, cleaning out, they've been scraping the boxes, but they're also, as you can see the gentleman in the in the in the middle here, he has got a blow torch and he is torching the inside of the boxes.

So a good set up indeed. And indeed, if there's suspicion of American foul brood, then this is what we're actually wanting to do, hold 3 ft deep, put in all what we consider to be infected and set them on fire. And they'll go, they go on fire very easily because the wax will burn very easily indeed.

And once that's done, you fill it in and that is the filling of the soil and that is the end of your, hopefully the end of your notifiable disease. The National Bee unit, the NBU is based in, in a place called Sam Hutton just outside York, and it's a part of a whole complex of laboratories, dealing with all sorts of, say, plant disease and other government laboratories, and the national unit is part of that. So they're there to monitor and control endemic diseases and pests within the within the the UK.

So as they have surveillance and contingency planning for exotic disease and pests, we're talking about this exotic pests at the moment, the thing that we're really concerned about is the Asian hornet, which is, unfortunately can come in from France. We trained beekeepers, support the industry, research and the diagnostic services for bee diseases. So they're very good at that sort of type of outreach to try and help beekeepers.

They then are custodian sale of the Bees Act of 1980, and the beesse and Pest Control order of 2006. And they run the bee health inspectorate. So you got one national bee inspector, 8 regional bee inspectors, and then from 47 seasonal.

So they, they, they're seasonal because they're really only needed during the summer months when the bees become active, that's of in April, right through to say October or so, and for the rest of the years, the seasonal bee inspectors will kind of other duties within say plant health. Like, examining bulbs come in and also seed potatoes. So in 2017, there were 5,558 apis were inspected in England, and that came to Scotland and Wales, that came to a total of 32,792 houses.

So it's a lot of surveillance, a lot of inspection, and still beekeepers, but the other thing, of course, you've got to remember is that beekeepers have in fact increased dramatically in recent years. About 12, I think 1213 years ago, the membership of the British Beekeeping Association. for England was in fact about 8000.

Today it's 26,500. So in fact the same inspector is still having to get around that same number of of . Of beekeepers.

So it's, it is quite a tall order and it is an area where in fact I think that we have a weakness and it would like to get much more inspectors considering the threats of of exotic diseases, not of American fibr, but also the fact that things like Asian hornet and and small high beetle from which could come in from Italy. But also the fact is that it's very easy when you get down to a level of American fibrid, which is really very small, probably maybe 50 cases a year, if a reasonable year. And that's very small, but it's the same as any disease when you get down to a very small level, it's very easy to let it slip and for it to get out of control again.

And there was some talk in Europe some years ago, is that possibly the notifiable status of American fibre, and European fibre should be dropped. And we had a fierce amount of resistance against that. I think it would be a wholly retrograde step to do that.

And it's something we're just going to keep an eye on and not allow either Europe or the British government to do that. So, there's also as well entel has arrived looking for, as I say, particular diseases coming in, be it small hive beetle. Asian hornets really don't need sentinel varies, but, but certainly it's the sort of thing there's a big network going on there.

And indeed beekeepers are strongly encouraged to register their colonies and apiaries on bee base. At the moment, as I say, it's 60 to 70%, which is not bad, but it should be a lot higher. And indeed, there is still a push from time to time that all beekeepers, because we're looking after animals that are food producing animals, that there should be a registration process as it would be for cattle, sheep, pigs, etc.

Bee Disease Insurance is a, it's a small company, and what they actually do is they, they will insure, beekeepers against, American European hybrid. Now tends to work at the beekeeper, must be a member of an association. The, the bee disease insurance covers the association, its members.

So it tends to be that you, you pay a subscription to your association, association, then joins BDI and then the AFP and EU must be diagnosed by a bee inspector, and it compensates for frames that are burnt. Now really, if it's an outbreak of American fibre in a particular box, then all those frames would go. But It may be that some of the other colonies in the Apria are still free of it.

And so the only pay out for the for the the frames. They're trying actually another scheme, which which would have started this last year, had it not been for COVID, but the idea of trying to encourage the whole day to do ship swarm procedure, because it's one of the procedures where EFB is, you can't treat it that way, . This is fine.

It will reduce the incidence of EFB, but it's not, it's not definitive. fire is the only definitive way of ensuring it to be covered. But the idea is we're trying to encourage beekeepers to to view ships warm much more readily with an idea to try and see if we can reduce EFB in instance or European fibre incidences much more.

A few other areas where, where which which have happened in the past, and this happened mostly, mostly in the United States, that there were various attempts at breeding American fibroid resistant bees that started notably in 1934 by Park and Pelle at Hawaii State University and Pandock, who was in fact an editor of the American Bee Journal. And really what they do is they've got colonies from all over the United States and any that showed promise for being potentially had less incidence of American fibrid. And the period of assessing and controlled breeding, again, some of it through artificial insemination, it resulted in dramatic improvements over 10 years.

And much of this was dependent on the bees, strong, what we call hygienic behaviour, in which they would very quickly root out, say, disease cells and clean them up before the disease could really get going, and therefore cleaned out more quickly and efficiently. And that was seen as a way of reducing AFB and also seen as being very hygienic bees, as we call them, and therefore resistant. Now, the similar work is being done today for varroa resistance.

The bees can be resistant to the varroa mite. The trouble was, I think that really the the AFP resistance work. It didn't seem to be progressed.

It went through probably into the 40s and 50s and didn't seem to be progressed. And whether or not it was just that the tendency for the genes, that the resistant genes were just lost in the much greater gene pool appears to be what happened. So it would be possibly a much more concerted effort.

This is a a vaccine against American fibroid. This is a very recent thing and we're not really quite sure what's happening with it, but some years ago, the two Finnish scientists, Frech and Samila at the University of Helsinki announced that they had succeeding in vaccinating queen bees, by feeding them bits of the AFB bacillus. And what happened was, is that these queens had developed immune factors that were passed through a remarkable substance called vitalagenin.

Which you find in all egg yolks. It's a very involved, chemical. It's involved in many aspects of of bees and other insects.

And it is deposited into the eggs, so the bee leisure eggs, the telegenum is in the eggs. And it's thought that these immune, Sort of factors that are produced from the queen are passed through into the eggs and so make the offspring resistant to American fibrin. Now at the moment, they're, they've just recently launched their vaccine calling it Dolan AXH oral vaccine and it used to be called Prime B, but that is to say it has been changed to this new name.

And they've applied for a licence with the, I've got that down as the USDA, but it's not probably though. It's part of the Federal Drugs Administration, the FDA, and then later on they're talking about replying in Europe. We, there's no information as yet on its efficacy.

However, if it works, it will be the first insect vaccine produced ever. And if possible, it could be a major weapon against American fire brood worldwide. And of course that does raise a question, as all vets would like to do, is can we in fact eradicate this disease.

Now, because the spores can last for such a long period of time. It will be a very long, long lasting eradication programme, but certainly the incidence of it has dropped dramatically since before the First World War, down to 50 cases a year in Britain, and certainly, it is much rarer across Europe than it used to be. We do get outbreaks from time to time.

But are we within Reaching distance of the possibility that we could look towards an eradication, a long term eradication programme. I actually I think we'll leave that question open. Again, just to talk about beeba is a huge resource for for beekeepers and for information probably for vets if you're looking for information on particular bee diseases and also say with through the British Bee Veterinary Association, there'll be any of the be only too happy to help you if you have any queries, say, from beekeepers in your practises.

And certainly I would advocate that you would do that. And certainly, please do not use antibiotics unless you get some advice from, from us, please. So I'd like to thank some of these people.

There's Professor Giles Budge at the University of Newcastle, who is doing a huge amount of work on both American and European fibrid. Doctor Kirsty Stanton, who used to be at the NBU, has now moved down to Purbright. Professor Marla Spivak from the University of Minnesota, Max Watson from Fighting Europe.

Thomas Williamson is a senior Bee inspector in Northern Ireland, and Doctor Nicholas Vidal Macwe. From, from France, Nicholas wrote a definitive textbook called Honeybee Veterinary Medicine, which is just excellent. And certainly I would advocate that if you want some information, that's a very, very good textbook.

There is also another textbook by John Carr. It is managing bee Health and again, it is written from a veterinary perspective, and again, it is indeed full of very good information. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed.