"what is the consensus of being able to  "clean" the plastic foundation for virus,"  

Some years ago I tried treatment free for mites.  Within two years my mite counts were very high and I had obvious deformed wing virus in every hive. I did not even need to look in the hives.  Just look at the crawlers on the ground.   Any sunny day I could see a couple dozen crawlers and several with massive wing deformity out of four hives and half a dozen nucs.  I treated the following April with apivar and kept seeing deformed wings although less in numbers and less crawlers until August when I treated for mites again with apivar.  By mid Sept I was no longer seeing deformed wings.  I am still using the comb that was in those hives and have since kept mite counts down and nearly never see a bee with deformed wings.  Last summer I only saw two or three all summer.

I think once a virus is established it takes considerable time for it to die out.  But, get rid of the mites and the viruses will run their course and die out or at least fall back to some minor back ground level.  I routinely use comb from hives that died over the winter without any special treatment of any kind and do not see a disease issue due to reuse.  I have also had EFB and had no problem with it recurring after antibiotic treatment.  EFB is a non spore forming bacteria so once it is knocked out I think there are few to no live bacteria left.

If I saw AFB I would burn the comb.  Or in the case of plastic foundation take the foundation out, pressure wash it, soak in gasoline until all wax was dissolved and then soak it in alcoholic lye solution until spotless and burn the frames.  Those spores are known to be viable for years.

Dick
  
  
  
  
 
 

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