I recieved an urgent email from The National Bee Unit who keep a register of all beehives in the UK, this was to inform me of a confirmed case of European Foul Brood in na hive within 3 KM of my hives.
This is like Foot and Mouth in bees.
So I will be keeping a close watch on my bees until this has hopefuly passed.
Update:
About two weeks after receiving the email about a confirmed case of European Foul Brood (EFB) in colony within 3 km of my hives I noticed that the brood within my remaining hive were either dead or were dying. I suspected the worst; I suspected the one remaining colony had caught EFB, either by robbing from the infected hive or bees from the infected hive robbing from mine.
Being a responsible beekeeper I contacted the National Bee Inspector to inform him of my fears. He had a full schedule over the next two days but given the seriousness of this disease he rearranged his schedule to fit a visit in on the 2nd day.
I had prepared myself for the bad news I expected to be told, I had everything ready to close the hive entrance after dark when all the foraging bees would have returned to the hive for the night, I would close the hive entrance to keep all the bees in. Then I was going to burn the hive with the infected bees.
I was surprised but relieved when the National Bee Inspector told me I had nothing major to worry about, he thinks when the thieves stole my other hives during the night several weeks ago, they had opened this hive to try and also steal its queen. Because the theft took place through the night, by opening the hive up for an extended period of time while they looked for the queen they had allowed the larvae to become chilled. This is why they were dying.
I was to replace the foundation with new foundation and feed the remaining bees 2:1 sugar water. This would help the workers produce the wax they would need to rebuild the wax cells for the queen to lay more eggs into. Once these had hatched and gone through the various stages of development they would emerge as new worker bees in a few weeks time.
With some time and a little bit of warm weather my bees would be back to full strength.
Thankfully this worked and this hive is fine now.
I also had several calls from members of the public asking for my help as they had a swarm of bees in their front gardens.
So I now have several more colonies, which are doing very well.
