Peter (from Australia) writes..

I would like to comment on this debate.

my additional comments..
First off thanks for your first hand experience in regards to this question.   As you may or may not know AFB is pretty rare here so unless you live in certain 'hot spots' any direct experience with AFB is likely to be fairly rare.  As an example over 50+ years and literally peeking into thousands of hives the total number of AFB hives I have seen is less than the fingers on one hand.

A beekeeping friend of ours rears a lot of queen cells from the Minnesota Hygienic program < he rears cells down in Southeast Texas and has a honey operation in North Dakota.  He seems to think that you need to remove any non hygienic hives from a breeding area to get any benefit from this trait.  Given that we know that hygienic behavior is a multi allele genetic trait it make a lot of sense that unless you concentrate this kind of genetic material you are likely to obtain little or no benefit.  This approach is not that much different from what old school bee breeders use of inbreeding to concentrate genetic material.  Casually it would seem to be somewhat the same kind of process you describe in your prior comments.

As an additional side bar (and something I also picked up in your comments Peter) the availability of substitutes is also a part of how these kinds decision plays out in the long or short term.  As an example the use of antibiotic (a substitute good for genetic improvement) pretty much derailed the hygienic program here in the US.  Certainly the availability and cost of antibiotic made this choice of antibiotic easier here.  However.... eventually there are limitations on the use of antibiotics that always seems to come into play.  Resistance to the antibiotic and quite often overuse by the beekeeper should be expected eventual outcomes.     

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