"I Was reading that (ethylene oxide) the other day...."

This would never be a normal treatment for a bee keeper.  Ethylene oxide is not easy to handle and is really toxic to breath.  It is a gas at room temperature, very flammable, potentially explosive in air and a carcinogen.  Ugly combination of properties.

My memory is it was tested to see if it could kill spores imbedded in wax comb so you could avoid burning.  The findings were it did not kill all spores but the wax was not infective.  I suppose too few spores got to the surface and transferred to brood to cause disease.  While in theory it only takes one spore getting to brood to cause disease the chance of this happening is nil with a low concentration of spores.  Still, as it was not 100% effective in killing the spores and application would require pretty special equipment and skills the idea seems to have been discarded.

Spores are really hard to kill.  They survive remarkable amounts of radiation.  They will survive in outer space for a considerable time.  They can remain "alive" in the spore state for a very long time.  Perhaps millions of years.  If it were not for the fact that AFB forms spores it would not be a big deal as a disease.  Antibiotic treatments would be able to cure it and it would not reappear often enough to be much more than a mild pain to the bee keeper.

Dick




" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html