I understand that gamma irradiation is used in Australia as a steriliser for
AFB infected equipment.
 
Mark Goodwin, MAF beekeeping scientist at Hamilton, NZ, has recently been
doing quite a lot of work on AFB.  NZ still has a destroy by fire for the most
part method of dealing with AFB.  We don't feed antibiotics for anything but
nosema, and we don't yet have EFB.
 
Equipment (lids, floors, boxes, excluders) can be 're-claimed' by *serious*
(160 degrees C) dipping in hot paraffin wax (a milder method of such dipping
is also quite common practice as woodware preservative technique).
 
Some of Mark's recent work involved the use of surface sterilants - that is,
what sort of stuff is suitable for washing gloves, hive tools, etc?  He didn't
do very extensive work, but tried out ozone and hypochlorite.  Varied
hypchlorite by time and concentration.
 
Ozone had no apparent effect.
 
Hypochlorite at greater than 0.1% caused significant AFB reduction.  At 0.1%,
75% of colonies on the sample slides were still alive.  At higher
concentrations, virtually none survived.
 
Using 0.1% again, there was a 28% reduction almost immediately on contact.
After one hour, only 2.3% of colonies remained.  After 2 hours, virtually
none.
 
None of this does the practical beekeeper an awful amount of good!  The sodium
hypochlorite for the time/concentrations used would probably eat the leather
of the gloves!
 
Nick Wallingford
NICKW @ WAIKATO.AC.NZ