> In my case as I had a barrier system in place it was quite easy to
> keep the infection in place.  I had picked it up early so did not
> spread it to other apiaries.  Killed off the hives and irradiated
> the gear that I wanted to salvage.

Interesting.  We don't see that here, at least I never have.  Over what
timespan did this breakdown happen?  How long between being seen as
clean and being seen as infected, and how advanced was the disease?

Is this possibly partly a question of AFB susceptibility in the bee stock?

I've only seen a handful of highly infected yards in my 40+ years (I am
counting multiple yards belonging to one beekeeper as one yard) --
including yards that one would think should be 100% infected by the
management apparent.

I've had Australian bees and I figure the ones I had were a little more
susceptible to AFB than the Hawaiian bees I prefer in that I found AFB
in the Australian bees several times and not in the others, but my
understanding has been that Australian breeders have imported and
selected for desirable genes to deal with common problems and that AFB 
was one.

One example that would tend to confirm that was that my Australian stock
wintered very well in a climate far colder than what they would ever
encounter in Oz.

Of course Australia is a huge territory and my experience is very
limited, so I am not making any blanket suggestions.

Climate and forage can have a huge effect on how diseases manifest
themselves as well.

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