>So, Allen, what is your opinion on NYS spending $200,000 a year 
policing beekeepers to make sure they don't still have the AFB 
scourge, and -- requiring them to destroy colonies with even a couple 
of rotten larvae?

Hehehe.  Thanks, Peter, for that nice slow, easy pitch.  You know what 
I think.  

If that money were spent on beekeeper education and cooperation, 
and identifying the problem stocks and the quailty ones that should be 
used instead, everyone except a few old-school queen producers 
would be far happier.  

Unfortunately it is always easier to appropriate money to fight a 
perceived scourge than it is to get the same amount of money to do 
something more constructive. 

Unfortunately, it is risky to point fingers and name a source of the 
problem, given the tendancy to sue and lobby these days, but it is not 
risky to identify superior suppliers, so let me start.  

I think, in my area, that Kona queens are sufficiently hygienic to resist 
AFB, even though there are sources nearby.  On the other hand, side 
by side, some Australian packages I had seemed to break down 
easily.  

Australia is a huge country and there are many excellent breeders and 
producers there, so please don't take my comments as a 
condemnation.  It is merely a one-time observation of one specific lot 
of bees.

Has anyone on the list ever seen more than a few cells of AFB in Kona 
carniolan stock in recent years? 

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