Peter Edwards wrote:

>I think that the point should be made that this normally happens UNDER the
>capping; 

I honestly never gave this much thought, since it is the ropiness which we
look for, not whether they are or aren't capped. I seem to recall seeing
larvae dead from AFB -- before being capped, but you know how memory is. 

I usually sample the first one I see, and none of my samples ever came back
EFB. They were all AFB. The only time I saw EFB was in California some time
back in the 1970s. I sent the sample to USDA and got confirmation of EFB. 

However, I found a recent study on virulence of different strains of AFB and
they state that pre-capped larvae DO DIE from AFB but they are not usually
seen as the bees are much quicker to remove material from uncapped cells.

> During the first 12 to 36 h after hatching, larvae are most susceptible to
infection, with a dose of about 10 spores or fewer being sufficient to
successfully infect and finally kill a larva.

SOURCE:
"Differences in Virulence of Paenibacillus" by Elke Genersch, et al.
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/71/11/7551

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