>I think the AFB problem confuses a lot of people who don't have a lot of 
>experience with it. Basically, if there is no AFB in your area, you don’t 
>need to use antibiotics (for it) on a regular basis.
      and
>If you are thorough in your inspections, you will be able to detect AFB at 
>a very early stage where it can be contained with antibiotics.

I understand this point of view.  It was what I was taught and practiced 
decades ago, but it seems the the times have changed and some are in the 
future, but many are still in the past.

That includes many queen suppliers and their unwitting customers.  I often 
trot out a nice piece of work from Baton Rouge to illustrate.  It is in 
regard to tracheal susceptibility, but it could as easily refer to AFB and 
hygiene.  See http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/articles/tracheal.htm . 
Although the study is a bit old now, I have recently been reassured that 
nothing has changed.

The upshot is that, although methods of producing strongly resistant queens 
are known, and have been for a long time, some queen producers are still 
selling queens that are WORSE than bees that Baton Rouge deliberately 
selected to be terrible at handling tracheal!  Are you buying from these 
suppliers?  Nobody knows, since the names are secret.  Otherwise nobody 
would have agreed to participate in the test.

Ergo, each of us has to determine how good their supplier is on their own. 
What is true for tracheal is equally true of hygienic traits.

In spite of major progress in AFB resistance in the past decade, inspection 
services and some extension personnel still assume that AFB is a dangerous 
disease with few options other than burning or medicating, rather than an 
indicator of a genetic weakness in any stock that exhibits an escalating AFB 
breakdown, instead of a spontaneous recovery from infection by AFB.

I speak to numerous breeders, researchers and commercial migratory 
beekeepers who tell me that they have very low incidence of AFB and normally 
use NO medication.

In fact, it happened that we had dinner guests tonight who run around 6,000 
hives and I asked them if I am wrong.  They confirm what I say.  So do many 
others, but old ideas die hard, and, moreover, there are many who depend on 
AFB and fear of AFB for a living or sideline income, and also for 
credibility and power.

Some beekeepers inspect regularly, especially researchers.  Some, especially 
commercial migratory, do very little detailed inspection and unless they 
encounter an obvious case or encounter difficulty with inspection services, 
just pick up dead outs in the fall.

Many in this latter group typically report around 1% average over time, 
WITHOUT TREATMENTS, and some have had AFB that has proven resistant to OTC.

What do they do with the infected hives?  Around here, they simply send 
*all* dead outs (most do not have any AFB) to gamma radiation because that 
process eliminates any pathogen that might be lurking -- sackbrood, 
chalkbrood, EFB -- whatever. The improved survival and brood patterns -- and 
rapid buildup -- in irradiated equipment compared to normal experience in 
dead out equipment more than compensate for the cost.

In fact, good bees could probably clean up any scale, with or without 
assistance from chemicals, but what is the point?  Bees are expensive and 
the cleanup process involves the sacrifice of many larvae until the 
infection is eventually cleared. Moreover, hygienic bees vary in their 
ability and some that can easily fight off small amounts of AFB might be 
marginal in cleaning up a hive that died after a major breakdown.  That 
would be a waste of good bees, even if they succeeded, since production 
would be lost.

What we have to remember is that genetic solutions are more variable than 
chemical solutions.  100 hives dusted with OTC will likely have uniform 
response. 100 hives with hygienic queens installed, will be less so, since 
we can expect a distribution of the characteristic and the odds are that 
there may be some that are more susceptible than others.  We must understand 
that and not panic.  It is just how nature works.  The occasional failure 
does not indicate the process is not valid.  Different thinking is required 
to use genetic methods.

Assuming an outfit with known hygienic bees has a breakdown in an occasional 
hive, perhaps burning or melting affected combs is in order, or maybe simply 
scraping off the scale might suffice.  Removing the scale somehow is 
definitely a good idea, since that is the major reservoir of contamination. 
Forget the hive boxes and floors, etc.  As for the bees, when a breakdown is 
encountered, obviously that bunch are not measuring up for handling AFB. 
Should they be killed?  I doubt it, if bees are valuable, but they need 
requiring and medication to assist until they are replaced by young hygienic 
bees, or to be spread into better hives that do have hygienic stock.
---

In a non-hygienic outfit, any breakdown is a potential disaster.  If you and 
your your bees are living in the past, then the old ideas apply.  Burn, 
melt, medicate, panic, but whatever you do, get a new queen supplier with 
known hygienic stock so it does not repeat.

Those who already have -- by accident or design -- hygienic bees probably 
wonder what all the fuss is about.

---
As for radiation in the treated equipment, suggested in a previous post, 
with gamma rays there is no residue of radiation.  The rays pass thru and 
are gone.  The word radiation confuses many people since it is used for many 
various things.  Gamma radiation leaves no more residue than the UV in 
sunlight, also referred to as radiation.  This sort of radiation should not 
be confused with contamination with radioactive substances which radiate 
rays of various sorts for a long time.  There are none involved here. 

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