> I would suggest that their suggested changes to practices that
> spread AFB are much more important than their specific choice
> between treatment and burning.  Recall that, at the outset, they
> decided that they did not want to use drugs, so they were left with
> only burning.  When the only tool you have is fire, everything starts to
> look like kindling.

My guess from this, and your previous posts, is that burning low clinical
infections (visible signs of AFB i.e. one or two cells etc.) is destroying
potential stock that may have some AFB resistance (by whatever mechanism) and
thereby the loss of this genetic material will be detrimental in the
reduction of AFB.

I think in principle this is probably correct. But the experience here in New
Zealand shows that this *does not matter*.

The program, if applied effectively, actually *eliminates* clinical AFB - in
a reasonably short time i.e. around 5 years.  And here I am talking about the
experience of multi thousand hive operations, one at least that was built on
the purchase of AFB riddled outfits.

The one most important Principle of the program is to never remove any
material (honey, brood, bees etc.) from a beehive without inspecting for AFB.
 This $costs$ for the labour to do this.  If endemic AFB levels are below
0.5% it may not be worth the effort.  If levels are 5% and above, it is
definitely worth it.  The burnt hives are not a great cost.  The greatest
cost (over the term of AFB elimination) is the labour cost to carry out THE
Principle!

There is therefore obviously an economic equilibrium of inspection costs vs.
AFB levels - and some beekeepers may decide to apply this.    However the
long term goal of elimination is the payback of signicantly reduced
inspection costs, drug costs, market access costs etc.  once an outfit is
disease free for a reasonable period of time. e.g. 3-4 years or so.

The insistance of lack of drug use is important in the program.  If you are
masking AFB with drug use, much valuable time spent looking for AFB is wasted
because clinical symptoms are supressed.  Your goal is actually to find and
remove all material with a Minimum Infective Dose of AFB spores from your
outfit.  If you don't find clinical symptoms, and therefore OK the removal of
material with greater than the MID from the hive, you have done so in error
and therefore will end up with AFB again somewhere else.

The one place where this is most important is in the inspection at honey
removal.  Supers that come from an infected colony end up going back on to
clean colonies next year and may infect several colonies depending on how the
frames are mixed up in the extracting plant.  At this stage the cause and
effect of AFB is impossible to trace.  This is the single most important
source of those odd hives that pop up mysteriously with AFB for no known
reason.

Regards,
Peter Bray
_________________________________________________________
Airborne Honey Ltd., Pennington St, PO Box 28, Leeston,
New Zealand Fax 64-3-324-3236,  Phone 64-3-324-3569
http://www.airborne.co.nz  [log in to unmask]