> >In dealing with AFB in your bees, you cannot apply something that will
> improve but not guarantee survival (and is survival defined here? the
> nightmare scenario being larvae survive through pupation and emergence but
> are still infective). While you sit there, hoping some of your bees
> "survive" the AFB infection, drift bees are carrying AFB into hives within
> their flight range, roughly in proportion to proximity. Meanwhile the bees
> who do not exhibit any benefit are creating those AFB spores we all so
> rightly fear.


We need to interject a little AFB biology here.  Spores are formed only in
dead larvae, as they turn brown and melt down due to the proteolytic
enzymes put off by the bacterium before it sporulates.  Adult bees wouldn't
carry spores unless they had gotten some on them from a dead larva, and
even then, they tend to groom them off and safely digest them.

Mark Winston showed that AFB doesn't spread well via bee drift.  Spores get
spread by robbing, or most efficiently by beekeeper transfer of combs.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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