New Apiaries - How many hives?

[MickBBKA]

Looks like my frames when the weather finally warms up and the bees go pollen mad after the east winds of death. They stuff it in any vacant cell. Could also be hygenic bees removing larvae because of disease or interbreeding.

[NigelP]

I think the point about most beekeepers not recognising disease when they see it has been well made.
The frame is from a colony with a bad AFB infection (from Portugal not UK). It has the classic pepper pot pattern of brood. I know I always examine anything that looks like this in my hive's very carefully. To date it has just been an uneven patter of brood emerging with clean empty cells. It's when those cells have "stuff" in them it's time to worry.
Alfred, mites can easily be treated and a new swarm is an ideal situation as all the mites are phoretic and easily dealt with.

[JoJo36]

Its slightly clearer from the second pic showing some sunken cappings which you couldn't see properly on the 1st one but interesting all the same!

[NigelP]

If I'd posted this photo of the leaf and the "sticky" remains it would have given it away..
It's damn difficult to diagnose bee disease.

[MickBBKA]

The yellow cells look like pollen viewed on my phone.

[JoJo36]

I think I need to get my eyes tested and order some new specs!!:)

[AdamD]

The yellow cells look like pollen viewed on my phone.

That's what I thought they were too so I wouldn't have considered AFB. As you point out Nigel, we need to vigilant. There's no stores in the frame. I did notice that the frame construction was not the usual design we see here - where we have a narrow bit which is where the lug breaks off from.

I did have a scare a couple of years ago which looked like EFB. I used a test-kit which proved negative and the newly-laying queen in question was superceded shortly afterwards; In a mini-nuc, this is unusual so the bees knew quite soon there was something wrong with her; I think there was a genetic abnormality in the brood and it would probably have been considered 'Addled Brood' in older books.

[Patrick]

I realise we have gone somewhat off thread but the question of disease recognition is a real issue around me.

Fortunately AFB is rare around here, but that can’t be said of EFB. We have the dubious privilege of hosting a strain of EFB M.plutonius sequence type 2 (ST2), that I understand occurs almost exclusively in Somerset and Nth Devon and is woefully persistent. Several of my beighbour (and highly competent) beekeepers have repeated occurrences of it. Sadly I found it in a local colleagues bees three years ago and he has since been unable to shake it off.

We should all carry out periodic detailed comb inspections with all bees shaken off into the hive (how often do any of us actually do that?). If there is anything you cannot immediately identify, take a digital photo on your phone. You can download the image on a laptop if necessary and magnify individual cells to ludicrous magnification to work out what is going on, rather than try to remember it.

Or post it on here and we can all have a look!