How to find out if there has been Statutory Disease in your apiary area
The National Bee Unit inspection teams across the country deal with cases of American and European Foul Brood – our 2 Statutory Notifiable Diseases – in England this is under the Bee Diseases and Pests Control (England) Order 2006, Amendments 2010 and Bees Act 1980.
Key to this is the NBU BeeBase apiary location database, which is confidential & available only to the NBU inspectors. The ‘public’ side of BeeBase is an excellent beekeeping resource and has useful summary information on disease incidence.
The BeeBase site is genuinely a treasure trove of information on beekeeping husbandry, some of which goes back a long way, including photos, guides and other publications, so do have a good look. The disease information and statistics are really useful; for example, you can check if you are in an area with a history of disease and, if you are, you should be extra vigilant.
If the NBU inspectors identify one of the foulbroods they manage treatment and control. Every registered beekeeper with an apiary within 3km of the diseased apiary is sent an email asking them to be alert and to check their colonies for signs of disease. The local NBU inspector will contact those beekeepers close by to arrange colony inspections.
We can’t do this, however, if your apiaries are not registered – and being a member of a BBKA branch does not mean you are automatically registered. Please do make sure that you are on BeeBase and keep your apiary records up to date. Do what you can to encourage other beekeepers to sign up to BeeBase. The NBU cannot protect your bees from pests and diseases unless we know where they are!
The whole disease control activity and the BeeBase apiary location database is totally confidential; apiary locations are only available to NBU inspectors who are legally required not to discuss beekeeper names and apiaries with anyone else.
Here’s what you do;
Go first to www.nationalbeeunit.com ; this is the BeeBase site.
Under ‘Contents’ click ‘Bee Pests, Diseases and Maps’
On the new page click ‘Disease Incidence’. There is a lot of information here;
For this ‘show around’ exercise, look at the 10km Square info & go to the ‘Live EFB report’. On the top right it shows 2020, previous years are there too.
Scroll down to Herefordshire – or Worcestershire if you live there – but sticking with Herefordshire for now – you’ll see OS square SO35 Eardisley had 2 cases in May; SO44 Tillington had 1 in April, 1 in June and 2 in July.
So this is where you need to know where your apiaries are. Under the Ordinance Survey system the whole country is divided into 100km squares, each given a 2 letter reference. Herefordshire falls into the SO reference.
Suppose your apiary is in Mordiford – HR1 4LK; go to Streetmap.co.uk or Grid reference finder or a similar website, and convert the post code to a grid reference. Mordiford is SO575375, the first and fourth digits are your 10km square. Look at for this square on the BeeBase EFB list – for SO53 Mordiford, no disease is recorded in 2020 to date.
Taking a different example; say your apiary was in Kings Pyon, HR4 8PU; the grid reference is SO435508. Now look for 10km square SO45 on the BeeBase EFB list, this is the Monkland square; you’ll see there were 3 cases of EFB in April 2020.
It’s a great system, providing disease information for beekeepers, whilst maintaining confidentiality.
A final point; you should always be alert to is the possibility of either of the foulbrood diseases in your colonies, they can just arrive over the fence, as it were, but be super alert if your apiary is in a square with any sort of history of foulbrood.