> Work by Walter Rothenbuler and students found that it takes a lot of [AFB] spores to kill a larva... The LD50 is around 10 thousand spores.  

A funny story about that.

Back in the 1990s, the profoundly incorrect assumption that a beekeeper could spread foulbrood easily between hives with as little as a "dirty hive tool" was view a self-evident, generally-accepted "fact".

Now, there's no such thing as "too much biosecurity", when it comes to bees, as we have learned the hard way over and over, but some folks were a bit... pedantic.

The late Bill Troup was a bee inspector for the USA state of Maryland, and an instructor for some of the "short course" classes associated with the annual Eastern Apicultural Society meetings, and when I went to my first EAS meeting, he was leading a workshop of some sort in the beeyard.  I went to the beeyard, he was there, we were there alone, early.  I did not know him, so by way of introduction, I said, "Gosh, that's a VERY shiny hive tool."

Bill instantly went into rant mode.  He was a big guy too, so he towered over me.  "You should ALWAYS clean your hive tool between EVERY hive!" was the gist of the rant.  I had only retired, bought my farm, and had started keeping 2 hives the prior spring, and this was early August, so I listened, as there was no one else around, and he was clearly speaking from a vantage of hard-won experience.

After he calmed down a bit, I said "I'm sorry, I was just asking about the metal - is that thing chromed?"  Back then, chromed hive tools were given as awards, and Bill was using one of these chromed hive tools for the workshop.  Bill turned out to be a very nice guy, and he and his wife (Nancy) attended EAS meetings, and worked like stevedores at every meeting.

But the misconception likely still persists.

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