"I would still be interested in  anyone's practice in dealing with this, if in fact anyone does. "

I have no proof at all that what I do is right.  I have not experienced it causing a problem for me.  I take equipment from a winter dead out and install it where ever I need it.  Clean up is brushing any dead bees off the comb as long as they brush off real easy.  If the comb is ugly and covered with mold or has dead bees with their heads in cells stuck too tight to brush off easily the bees clean the comb up just fine when they need the space.  The exception would be if the hive died due to AFB which is a spore forming bacteria.  That I would burn.  I would not even risk trying to save boxes.  It is too easy and inexpensive to make another box versus any risk at all of killing another hive or worse having it spread.  Bacterial spores are well known to be really, really tough and things like bleach often do little or nothing to spores.  Even much more powerful sterilant treatments such as radiation or ethylene oxide gas will not always kill spores.  Bacterial spores are far harder to kill than any virus as far as I know.

Most pathogenic viruses do not do very well outside the host for very long.  HIV is dead in seconds or it would have already killed all humans.  I am sure everyone by now has breathed in dead HIV viruses unless you are hermit living in the wilderness.  Flu lasts only a day at best in the environment and generally a far shorter time. 

As best as I can tell every hive has some low background level of DWV and this situation existed long before mites came to the US.  But, in the absence of mites and the stress they cause and the mega transmission of the virus by mites DWV does little or nothing to bees as the number of virus copies inside the bees do not rise to symptomatic levels.  My experience is if you have a hive with enough DWV in the bees to be causing significant symptoms and you kill the mites down to nil you will still see evidence of DWV for several months as it gradually is brought under control by the bees.  But, this is because you have bees loaded with the virus infecting new bees, not because it takes that long for the virus to die on hive surfaces.

Here is a real brief blurb about survival of viruses and bacteria outside the host:
https://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/how-long-do-bacteria-and-viruses-live-outside-the-body.aspx

Dick

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