Reporting Foulbrood

Bees can suffer from a variety of diseases, but the ones with the most impact to bees and beekeepers are brood diseases. These can range from the relatively mild such as chalkbrood to foulbrood, which can devastate not just one colony but a whole apiary or even further afield.
Foulbrood (both European and American) is a statutory notifiable disease, and so beekeepers are legally obligated to report any suspected diseased colonies under the Bee Diseases and Pests Control Order 2006 (as amended). This is done by contacting either the NBU or one of your local bee inspectors.

Recognising Foulbrood

The National Bee Unit produces an excellent brochure on EFB and AFB, including how to recognise it.
You can find that brochure here.

Fera Science released an educational video on YouTube: European Foulbrood

We have put the spotlight on EFB and are re-doubling our efforts to encourage all beekeepers to check their brood for symptoms throughout the season.

To assist us, our Education Officer Richard Bache MB has written a SBKA EFB leaflet which starts with the impact of EFB in Somerset (see left). He looks at the cause, prevention, signs, diagnosis and management of EFB through informative text and an excellent series of photos he has taken himself.

PhD studentship researching the Somerset strain of EFB
Somerset BKA and Bee Diseases Insurance Ltd (BDI) are jointly funding PhD student Hollie Pufal at Newcastle University. Somerset BKA has committed £8,000 over four years starting in 2020.

Hollie is investigating Somerset's local EFB cluster using modern molecular methods in an attempt to improve the understanding of disease transmission and discover why this disease cluster is so persistent in the area.

A few years ago BDI asked Fera to undertake further research into EFB and funded Dr Ed Haynes to develop a bioinformatics pipeline to sequence genomes of the causal agent, Melissococcus plutonius, which revealed that there were different strains of EFB.

Hollie will refine this protocol and use it to assess transmission events using Somerset as the case study. She will be working with beekeepers across the county as well as with NBU Bee Inspectors to improve local disease control measures.

EFB is the most prevalent bacterial brood disease in England and Wales with up to 350 cases each year and, in some years, Somerset had the dubious distinction of having the highest number of cases.

Hollie said: “Having worked with plants for the last few years I am new to the bee world, but I am looking forward to learning more about their fascinating behaviours and to a new challenge.”

Hollie is supervised by Professor Giles Budge, co-supervised by Professor Steve Rushton both from Newcastle University, Dr Ed Haynes from Fera Science Ltd as well as BDI.

Characterisation and quantification of secreted factors from strains of the honey bee brood pathogen, Melissococcus plutonius (EFB) Supervisors: Kirsty Stainton at Fera Science Ltd. and Thorunn Helgason at University of York

For more information and updates, visit BDI's website.

You may be interested in Kirsty Stainton's lecture at the 2018 National Honey Show which shows how strong ST2 is in Somerset. The slide on treatment success is interesting as it suggests destruction of ST2.
Click here to take a look: nhs_bdi_lecture_oct_2018_2_.pdf