> I thought that AFB spores would be on the bees themselves as well as in the
> honey. Is this not true? If spores are on the bees, then there will be
> spores inside the new hive and on everything inside

It's the numbers that count.
Honey in bees stomach contains most likely thoudands of times more spores that what is on her body. You don't have to get rid of all spores to cure the colony. Just that much that the probability of spore ending up to a young larvas food comes to about 0. With AFB you  have to get hundreds of million spores to a colony to get it most likely with symptoms.

> Seems I wasted the bees. One hive once, was the strongest hive I had and all
> were very strong. I think this one robbed a wild swarm and picked AFB up
> from them.

Maybe, but not for sure. If I meet a beekeeper with lot of hives and only one yard with symptoms just coming up , it might be good idea to kill the bees to clear the situation at once. But If he has had symptoms in several places for some time the spores are all over his equipment, and killing some hives will not clear the situation.

In Finland we are lucky to have free AFB analysis from honey in  the state laboratory, so we can test all hives before we decide what to do.

Ari Seppälä

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