A chronic case of Apis Hypochondriasis
Where is my inner Buddha when I need it?
It felt as if I was reading the sentence of a court.
The text message from the Scottish Bee Inspectorate, a department of government, was addressed to me personally. It warned of outbreaks of European Foulbrood around the area where I live. One of the villages it named is only half a mile down the road from my house.
Reading this, I knew, without doubt, that it must be my fault.
Not only were my own hives blighted by the plague but also it must have originated in my apiary. I had to be the guilty one.
European Foulbrood (EFB) is one of two notifiable infections that commonly attack honeybee colonies. The other is American Foulbrood (AFB). “Notifiable” means that the beekeeper is legally bound to let the government know if they emerge and then submit to the inspections and instructions of the Inspectorate. That often means that officials will come and kill your bees, incinerate your hives and all your beekeeping equipment in a pit and then fill it in like a grave. It’s like foot-and-mouth or BSE for bees.
Readers may remember my description of these pestilences from a previous post “The infections themselves are activated by invasive bacteria that attack and consume the larvae in the brood comb. And their effects are so stomach-churningly repellent that the word ‘foul’ barely begins to cover it. Before the larva has a chance to become a bee, it has been turned into nauseating mush.
The bacterium that causes European Foulbrood, Melissococcus plutonius, is taken into the gut of the honeybee larva where it competes with the larva for sustenance and effectively eats its host alive. You can tell that your hive is infested with EFB because it stinks disgustingly like some kind of sulphurous ammonia.”
A common cause of EFB is slapdash beekeeping, including a failure to maintain operating-theatre standards of hygiene and disinfection. The bacterium lurks dormantly in the seams and corners of used brood boxes and frames. Whenever this kit is taken out of the back of your shed at the end of winter, its components need to be scorched with a blowtorch to kill all the bugs, ready for the new season. I have to admit this task sometimes feels like too much faff. I don’t always bother. I kind of imagine the bees will take care of it: they’re so good at housekeeping.
Similarly, equipment like hive-tools and gloves should be steeped in a bucket of water containing soda crystals after every hive inspection. Guess what? Sometimes, it slips my mind.
OK, copper, you’ve got me: I admit it. By nature I’m a chancer; a corner-cutter; a risk-taker. Guilty as charged.
When that text arrived, carrying its sentence of doom, I was on holiday. The following day, I was sitting in a car park at the beach when my mobile phone rang. It was an officer of the Bee Inspectorate. In person.
“How are you?” he asked, having introduced himself.
“Deeply troubled to hear from you,” I replied.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said breezily, “you’re probably fine.”
He filled me in on some details of the outbreak and asked if I had noticed any symptoms in my hives. I told him I was hundreds of miles away at that moment but promised to check as soon as I got home. He asked me to take photographs of anything I found and texted me an email address to which I should send the images.
I barely slept for the following three nights. Racked with guilt, my mind churned constantly over my options and their consequences.
What if I found EFB but didn’t notify the Inspectorate and, with my own hands, killed the bees, burned the hives and buried the remains? How would they ever know the plague had originated with me? But, then, I wouldn’t be in a position to claim compensation for my losses under the insurance I carry as a member of the Scottish Beekeepers Association.
No: better to admit my guilt and take the consequences. Give up beekeeping and go to my grave in shame. But I’d also have to move house and leave the area. Everybody around would find out and shun me in the street.
Every once in a while, the thought would cross my mind that maybe I would find my hives to be fine, with no sign of the infection. But that didn’t last two seconds. It couldn’t possibly be true.
My flight back to Scotland was delayed. I didn’t get home until late Saturday afternoon when it was raining. No time then to inspect bees who would have tucked themselves up for the night and wouldn’t take well to being disturbed.
Our older daughter was home for the weekend. She agreed to come with me to the hives Sunday morning and take photographs of the deformed larvae and the puddles of decay in the cells of the comb.
When I lifted the roof of the first hive, she murmured, “Oh, I’ve got a very bad feeling about this. There’s nothing happening in here.”
When I took off the crown board above the super frames, however, it was obvious that the bees weren’t sick: they simply weren’t bothered about our intrusion. They were going quietly about their business loading the frames with honey. Keats might have been leaning over our shoulders and scribbling “For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells,” in his notebook.
Hooray! Couldn’t be better. Except it did get even better when I started prising frames out of the brood box and found healthy eggs and larvae and sealed brood. Not a trace or a whiff of infection.
Same with the second hive. All as well as could be.
The trouble was all in my mind. I rushed to my desk to email the Scottish Bee Inspectorate and tell them to call off the hounds.
But what gets into me at such times? What makes me so certain that I am to blame? It certainly isn’t the spirit of the Buddha.
Let’s call it Apis Hypochondriasis
I’m here to tell you it’s not good for you.