I have some hives coming down with a brood disease that looks close 
enough to AFB for me to second guess myself.  Normally AFB symptoms are 
obvious to me, so I have developed a habit of ignoring brood diseases 
without overt AFB roping and scales.  I have not found a single AFB case 
in my bees for the last 5 years (I have found it in other people's 
hives).  At first I suspected parasitic mite syndrome virus infection, 
but the dead larvae are normally granular, not smooth, with that.

In this situation there are a few sunken perforated cappings, with light 
brown larvae inside melted and stetched (not coiled) on the bottom of 
the cell.  The larvae have a smooth non-granular consistency but seem 
very watery, and rope out less than 1 cm.  The hive does not have a 
single AFB scale on any comb, and I also checked all combs in the top 
box for most of the other hives in the yard and did not find any 
scales.  The hive is apparently able to quickly completely clean up the 
dead and capped larvae.  I opened all of my hives to make nucs about 4 
weeks ago and I did not notice any symptoms like this (and I always look 
for AFB).

For the first time I used the Holst milk test, in which a smear from a 
dead larva is put into 5 ml of milk.  The instructions say the milk will 
"clear in 15-20 minutes" if AFB protease is present.  My results were no 
change after 20 minutes, but the milk coagulated into a cheese after 1 
hour.  I did the same test on another hive with the same symptom and 
there was no change in the milk.

Has anyone ever done the milk test, and is coagulation what the 
instructions mean by "clear"?

A very heavy nectar flow started yesterday, so I will go out again on 
Friday and see if the bees cleaned it all up.  If not I will take a few 
pictures.

--Jeremy Rose
San Luis Obispo, CA

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