A few things are different from the USA. We are years behind in breeding resistant bees as all hives with AFB are burnt so our bees are suscectible to as few as 5,000 spores in honey.



One experience I can relate.

A beekeeper with eight hives in a very remove area  (never ever had AFB), had his honey crop extracted by a contract extractor. Most of the honey supers were returned to the home apiary but a few were given to another beekeeper to clean out.



All the original beekeepers hives developed AFB and two of the friends hives came down with AFB within months. 



We enquired with the extractor and worked out that the previous lot he had extracted was from a known  beekeeper with an AFB problem. (Eg 50 out of 100 nucs sold to a new beekeeper developed AFB. Spore testing showed it to be in the boxes the nucs came in so the disease wasn’t acquired locally).



This suggested that millions of spores got transferred on to the frames during extracting as the plant was not cleaned down after each extraction.

( Surprisingly the next beekeepers honey boxes through did not show visible signs of AFB).



Yes, it depends on the susceptibility of the bees and the beekeepers quarantine and frame replacement rageme and  original spore numbers. 

Since burning the hives, no further disease has been seen in the friends yard or the original beekeepers new hives.



AFB is a big problem in some areas of New Zealand. One (un-published) part of a recent study predicted that 20% of study apiaries had spores while the others in the study were totally free of spores using DNA testing of nurse bees.



It was more political to saw that only so many hives out of XXX hives showed AFB,  yet this study was based on samples from apiaries.





Frank Lindsay

New Zealand



Sent from my iPhone



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