  We show that a low energy beta-beam facility can be used to search for
sterile neutrinos by measuring the disappearance of electron anti-neutrinos.
This channel is particularly sensitive since it allows to use inverse beta
decay as detection reaction; thus it is free from hadronic uncertainties,
provided the neutrino energy is below the pion production threshold. This
corresponds to a choice of the Lorentz gamma=30 for the 6He parent ion.
Moreover, a disappearance measurement allows the constraint of sterile neutrino
properties independently of any CP violating effects. A moderate detector size
of a few 100 tons and ion production rates of 2E13 per second are sufficient to
constrain mixing angles as small as \sin^22\theta=0.01 at 99% confidence level.
