-- Humour warning - unsuitable for the humourless reader --

There are only two kinds of beekeepers in North America.

(I state this generality with the usual allowance for a [very] few 
exceptions and those who have AFB and won't admit to themselves that 
they do):

1. Beekeepers who have AFB and know it, and
2. Beekeepers who have AFB and don't know it

That is assuming AFB is defined -- as the purists would have it -- as 
having even one AFB spore in a hive, no matter how viable that spore is 
or not,  whether that sole spore is positioned to infect a larva or not, 
or accompanied by sufficient similar spores to manage the task or not. 
It's AFB.

Whether the bees would promptly dispatch that one infected larva STAT or 
not is not even a question in the minds of purists.  That hive has AFB. 
  Burn it.  Burn the beekeeper, too.  Shame!

As defined by the rest of us, AFB is a continuum, from where hives have 
a few spores of varying viability, possibly undetectable without 
destructive sampling and no sign of breakdown, to hives dead or dying 
with most brood cells occupied by larvae in varying stages of decomposition.

I doubt that anyone will find any wax or honey sample of any reasonable 
size in North America that does not contain at least one spore.  Of 
course that is not something anyone can prove but something that 
extrapolates logically from what we know from what limited sampling that 
has been done. YMMV.

It has been proven that old spores can germinate and infect larvae, but 
the matter of what conditions must be present to do so and the level of 
infection resulting don't seem to be brought up when that observation is 
trotted out as justification for a scorched earth approach.

I have personally, out of curiosity have placed several badly scaled up 
frames into a hive and treated with Tylosin to see what happens.  Just 
as Pettis reported at an ABF (not AFB) meeting a decade ago, months 
later it was impossible to tell that there was ever AFB in that frame by 
simple observation.  Years later their has been no recurrence.

So, the question then is really, how best to deal with an ubiquitous 
problem -- by destroying the host, or targeting the pest.

Personal philosophy, experience, level of education and economics (for 
Countryboy:) determines the answer.

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