> I question whether eating diseased material is actually a significant transmission route of viruses.

The cited study did use "tagged pathogens", which is a neat trick, but it did not isolate the virus from the cannibalism.

What might remove all doubt would be to insert some virus-infected larvae, but behind a barrier so "Hannibal Nectar" cannot cannibalize them, and provide edible larvae that have been irradiated to kill all possible viruses.  This sort of method would truly isolate "the virus" from "the cannibalism", and address possible alternate methods of transmission.

But, either way, the message is the same... once capped, those drone-comb cells are ticking time bombs.  With "hygienic" bees, the fuse is even shorter than you thought.

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