Thanks for the input and suggestions. As per Tracey and Bill's suggestion , I contacted Dr. Rob Currie, who is Megan Colwell's PHD sponsor to ask him to forward my question to her (her contact info was not available on the web). Megan is also the researcher whom Glen referred to at the beginning of this thread, although I could only locate the abstract for her paper.

Per Dr. Currie, the answer (his email below) to the question is still unresolved (this surprises me- it seems like something researchers would have been interested in a long time ago). Interestingly, his lab has also done research on the reuse of dead out equipment and has found that this is is not a minor issue at all- as some would think- and the reuse of comb per their experiments has a huge impact on honey production. Of course, he isn't referring here to DWV in particular, and I have no idea what  they actually suggested was the culprit, but I'll find out. Maybe that's old news- but I have never heard it before (its related to a viral load, which maybe it isn't). It compliments Tracey's experience with irradiation.

I'll share any further information I might get from Dr. Currie or Megan.


Hi Matthew:


I have copied Megan on this so she can comment.  She is examining how long viruse like DWV remain infective on comb but does not have a final answer yet for how long to store comb before it is safe.

We did do a fairly large scale  field trial in my lab hiving bees into dead outs and comparing their performance realtive to bees hived on clean comb, foundation and irradiated comb.  Non of  the colonies died but honey production was reduced by about 70 pounds per hive in colonies hived on deadouts (It should be noted that our average honey production is about 160 pounds per hive).  So there are some negative effects.


Rob
Rob Currie
Professor and Head
Dept. of Entomology
University of Manitoba

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