<What if someone didn't know
<their hives had AFB and they brought their suppers to be extracted and
<the same afternoon there where supers coming in from another beek so
<the extracting equipment had wet honey in it from the first job. Would
<the second beeks frames get spores? 

 Custom extracting is becoming popular here in Finland. We have had lot of 
thinking about this problem and some practical experience.  To put it short the 
danger of spreading AFB in extracting between beekeepers is not real  IF 
everyone gets their own frames and boxes back.

We have no case of even suspecting that AFB come from custom extracting. I do 
not recommend washing for that reason.

If the extractor is wet of AFB honey and frames from other beekeeper come into 
the machine, the new disease free honey ?washes? the contaminated honey away. 
Very little, if any is transferred to the later extracted frames. This can be 
easily tested by putting dry built frames into the extractor and weighing them 
before and after.  I have tested and have not seen any gain in grams, but some 
stickiness in the bars.

So a little honey can come in contact, but the test is not real because it is 
missing the ?washing? effect because of dry frame. 

Anyway I think that some honey can transfer into the first load in extractor, 
For the second and after that all  (about 99.9 %) honey touching the frames is 
from the previous new load.  

So the real question is can we transfer AFB with 1-2 g of honey from hive to 
other(0,1 g  in several frames) When Danish researchers Hansen & al.  were 
studying AFB in the 1990s they could not infect all hives with 100 g of honey 
from a hives with plenty of dead larvae. 

Personally I think likelihood of getting ABF in extracting with common 
extractor from previous beekeeper is smaller than getting the hive hit by 
lightening. If no frames are exchanged.

But on the other hand getting just 1- 3 extracted frames from infected colony 
is a very real danger. 

Ari Seppälä
beekeeping advicer
Finland

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