PARADISE LOST

摘要

All was going well until I got to my polystyrene hive made by Paradise Honey in Finland. Unlike most of the hives in this apiary that come and go on a fairly regular basis, this one has never left the property and I kept it for mainly educational purposes.Close inspection of the first brood frame showed just one cell that didn't look quite right with a small irregular hole on one side. The larva was dead but didn't rope out as much as I would normally expect for AFB, so I closed the hive up and went and got a test kit.On my return, the bees had already cleaned up the cell I had opened. The hive was strong with two full-depth brood boxes and about 15 kilograms of honey, and I found one more suspect cell on the last frame of brood. Once again it was not quite typical AFB but the test kit showed positive, so there was no doubt.