Honeybee health day

Today I went to a bee health conference, hosted by the Penrith beekeepers. We had three sessions, looking at hive invaders such as Varroa mites, and hive beetles; the two ‘foulbrood’ diseases with real samples to look at, and chalk brood.
The foulbrood session was quite scary! We had to dress in PPE, and then get up close to brood frames with the actual disease present in them. These are really nasty and fatal hive problems and some we would all hope to never see, but now we know what to look out for.
There was some discussion of the dreaded Asian Hornet, and the very real threat of it turning up here in Cumbria. And some tales from the Bee Inspectors of what they have seen, including swarms of foreign bees arriving on the side of shipping containers.
Although Cumbria is at present fairly free of these foreign diseases, it will be only to easy for them to arrive with the international transport that goes on.
It was a very useful and informative day, and I’m sure we will all be more observant now when checking our hives.