I hope no one got the impression that I advocated dropping all antibiotic 
treatments in one season.  While I am very heartened and do not doubt 
Brian's success with "shake and bake" (shake bees on to new comb and burn 
infected comb) I wonder if it will work as well for everybody.  

I mentioned that there were some beekeepers in our study in which we could 
not find a single AFB spore across hundreds of honey samples and across a 
number of seasons.  These beekeepers had also not seen a case of AFB for 
years.  Their risk of a flare-up was clearly small even in the absence of 
treatments. 

On the other hand, some beekeepers in our study consistently had spores in 
their samples and were always coming across a low level of AFB-killed 
colonies in their deadouts.  I do worry that if they went "cold turkey" 
to "shake and bake" (which is appropriately termed the “cold turkey shake 
and bake”) that: 1) AFB cases would immediately increase, 2) their staff 
would suddenly have increased demands on inspection, shaking and keeping 
track of cases... and many balls would be dropped and 3) AFB levels would 
increase quickly within a few years.  After some finger-pointing and a 
raft of expensive packages to bring numbers back up, the beekeeper would 
vow to never give-up antibiotics again.  This would be an unfortunate end.

Intuitively I like Lloyd's approach of using an antibiotic-transition-
period, in which comb is being renewed and diligent inspection used to 
weed out high risk equipment.  It reminds me of the apocryphal saying of 
Dr. Shimanuki, “the best way to come off antibiotics is one apiary at a 
time”... this philospohy allows for staff to gear up to the challenge and 
does not put all your investment at risk immediately.  This is "the 
warmish turkey shake and bake" and is somewhat easier to swallow 
(particularily with gravy).

I have my own experience with shaking.  A smart student in our lab, Robert 
Albright, mastermided a study looking at the costs and benefits of 
shaking.  In the study infected colonies were shaken onto foundation 
during the dandilion-flow, simulating what a beekeeper could do if they 
found AFB-colonies after their spring inspections.  The bees were shaken 
onto 9-frames of wax foundation (1) and we compared their honey production 
to 2) overwintered colonies and 3) April-hived pacakges.  Although the 
shaken colonies did not produce as much honey as the other two groups on 
the first pull, they caught up and produced as much honey on the last 
three pulls. I can't remember the numbers exactly, but the shaken colonies 
made 200-ish lbs, the packaged colonies 250-ish and the wintered colonies 
300-ish.  We figured that if we had decided to turf the AFB colonies and 
bought a package to make up the loss it would have cost us ~$40.  Shaking 
was more profitable.

Adony

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