Regarding medicating bees with AFB, the problem here is that people making decisions know little about beekeeping in the real world. In my view, the unit is not the colony but the apiary (and by extension the entire outfit). If AFB is found in an apiary, the afflicted colonies should be destroyed and the remaining colonies medicated to prevent the outbreak from spreading. 

I know this from experience with AFB, not from pamphlets. Furthermore, if regulators insist on implementing onerous restrictions on beekeeping without sufficient scientific basis, beekeepers will go off label, as many have them already have for decades. The beekeeping industry is deprived of necessary tools, wheras:

> FDA has launched Guidance #213, an initiative for pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily end sales of medically important antibiotics for certain purposes in the meat and poultry industry. But Guidance 213 fails to curb the risky, routine use of antibiotics in meat and poultry production, a major contributor to the development of antibiotic resistance.

PLB

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