Hi Bill,
Glad to see that you understand also.


Just like bees starting from scratch in a new locaiton, so
any "infected" honey is consumed and and a fresh start on
clean comb with AFB is made, and the old hive is cleaned
out by wax moths and other scavengers, we/I become the
scavengers for the wax, on badly infested combs and clean
them out of infected hives down to manageable levels, which
then gives the bees something they themselves can handle,
not being overwhelmed then, which aids in developing
natural resistance. Then by reprocessing the beeswax by old
methods and not today's solar wax melters, we make new
foundation again and what little, if any active spores are
left embeded in the wax doesn't hurt the honeybees, as it
is worked in their mouths and if ingested doesn't hurt them
either in drawing out comb, which they do. For most all
commercial beekeepers know that bees move around and
reprocess beeswax in a beehive to drawout new combs as
needed, and when ordering custom foundation many ask for
thicker wax base knowing the bees will use it in drawing up
the walls faster. Also, to note, swarms going into old
cavaties do rework the remaining wax found there into
excellent new combs and repair such quite nicely, foul
contaminated or not.A good way to follow this recycling of
beeswax in a hive is to place in colored sheets of
foundation and then see where the color is moved to, aka
the newly added wax foundation.

As for isolation from heavy AFB isolation I think this is
your POV, for whether isolated or not, old methods of
processing do work, and have worked for us in isolated
areas or heavy traffic areas.

Regards,

Dee A. Lusby
Small Cell Commercial Beekeeper
Moyza, Arizona
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OrganicBeekeepers/






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