I can understand the concern about diseases 100 years ago and how hobby beekeepers might cause commercial folk to fear they would make the disease situation worse.  On the other hand 100 years ago there were a lot more ferals than hobby beekeepers I suspect and those ferals likely were a major disease issue.  Locally we had an AFB epidemic about 40 years ago.  Hobby people burned lots of hives.  In general anyplace from half of what they had on up.  It seemed to me like the epidemic did not really abate until pretty much all the local ferals had been killed.  That took several years.  Then trach mites came, followed by varroa.  The ferals never came back until perhaps very recent years when there seems to be some evidence they are recovering in a few very local areas.  The net result is we have not had any AFB issues locally now for years.  The anecdotal stuff I hear says AFB is less of a problem in the US than it used to be by a fair margin.  Is it possible varroa controls the feral population well enough across the country that AFB simply does not have that uncontrolled background of infection and thus is the root reason AFB is not now a big problem?  Is it possible if we got mite resistant bees good enough at dealing with mites and associated viruses that we could grow back a big feral population that could cause AFB to return as a major issue?
Personally I would rather deal with mites than deal with AFB.

Dick

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