> In dealing with AFB in your bees, you cannot apply something that will improve but not guarantee survival (and is survival defined here? the nightmare scenario being larvae survive through pupation and emergence but are still infective). While you sit there, hoping some of your bees "survive" the AFB infection, drift bees are carrying AFB into hives within their flight range, roughly in proportion to proximity. Meanwhile the bees who do not exhibit any benefit are creating those AFB spores we all so rightly fear.

My understanding of AFB is that those spores are generally in most hives. It's the outbreak that is frightening. I worked with a beekeeper who was experiencing an outbreak in 2 hives out of about 15. He burned those hives and no other hives were ever infected. An adjacent apiary with over 30 hives had no outbreak either. I note that Allen Dick had a pretty good view of AFB - IMO. On a couple of occasions the bee inspector showed up to inspect my hives because of an outbreak in an
Apiary within flight range. I never had any AFB. I have the skeptics attitude regarding the transmission of AFB.

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