Result!

14th of February, 2014, Youtube's 9th birthday and St Valentine's Day. As well as the usual stack of cards from various admirers and hopefuls this year I also got a large white envelope from DEFRA. I've mentioned a couple of times that my bees were in the European Union Pilot Surveillance Programme for honey bee health. This European Commission driven study included 200 beekeepers in England and Wales of which I was one. The Regional Bee Inspector visited each beekeeper in the study three times, twice in 2012 and once in 2013. As well as a visual inspection he took samples of bees from each hive which were then taken off to the Bee Unit for analysis, specifically TaqMan® Molecular Pathogen Screening. Yeah it's not exactly an olde worlde beekeeping technique ;) From what I can gather it involves searching for the DNA of specific viruses in a sample using DNA Probes. It sounds a little Fantastic Voyage to me, but you can always read up on Polymerase Chain Reaction yourself if you're having a slow week.

In the first visits samples were taken from all three hives, in the second samples were taken from Hive1 and a sample of dead bees from the deceased Hive3. In the third visit a sample was taken from Hive1 which the inspector felt showed some signs of varoosis. The first samples also had varroa counts lab checked too.

Varroa Counts on 5th September 2012

Hive	Varroa count per 100 bees
Hive1	0.8
Hive3	0.58
Hive3	1.45

The molecular screening checked for Deformed Wing Virus, Nosema Apis, Nosema Carnae, Acute Bee Paralysis Virus, Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus, Kashmir Bee Virus and Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. The names of some of these viruses hints at how far across the globe they've spread, that's mainly thanks to people of course.

Molecular Pathogen Screening Results

Hive	5/9/2012	14/4/2012	16/8/2012
Hive1	None	NC	NC
Hive2	ABPV	No Test	No Test
Hive3	None	NA & NC	-

(ABPV= Acute Bee Paralysis Virus, NC= Nosema Carnae, NA = Nosema Apis)

Hive3 had died out overwintering between the first and second visits, and Hive2 wasn't sampled in the second and third visits because there were no visible signs of disease. Hive 1 was only tested as it had shown visual signs of varoosis. When I gave the bees their Oxalyc Acid treatment in late November Hive2 was the most populous.

Last weekend I had a listen to the hives with a stethoscope just to see if the bees were surviving. Hives 1 and 2 seemed to be doing well but Hive3 which contained the captured swarm was a lot quieter. Using a stick I had a poke around in the entrances to make sure they weren't blocked with dead bees.