If everyone adopted the habit of recycling brood combs on a 5 or 6 year basis then there would be a lot less disease in our hives and consequently a lot less chemical control. For all diseases there is a minimal infective dose which must be reached before a disease will establish itself. If you can stay below this thresh hold then a disease outbreak is highly unlikely. There are two important issues here, the first of course is disease load or the amount of infectious material trapped in the multiple layers of cocoon in any brood comb. Think about the last time you melted down a brood comb to recover the wax; what was left, a mass of old "disease containing" cocoon. Bees deliberately entrap the faeces of developing brood between these layers of cocoon, if the layers are disturbed then the infectious material is exposed and so the cycle of infection cycle continues. After all, why do we burn beehives and combs after they become contaminated with AFB spores, to destroy the source of infection. Also, ask anyone who has had equipment and combs gamma radiated to kill AFB spores, after repopulation of the hives, the bees do extremely well. The equipment is the same, the only difference is that it is sterile. And for those who have expanded a beekeeping business from a few to hundreds or thousands of hives, disease wasn't really a big problem until your business stop expanding (assuming the expansion was from dividing hives into new equipment and by not buying existing equipment). Why ? Because you continually diluted the disease load in your hives by placing new foundation in them. The second point worth considering is, on average how long do feral colonies inhabit a site ? Usually only a few years and why because diseases destroys the colony. Swarming (by which feral colonies spread and we breed to suppress) is a wonderful disease control mechanism, most of the disease load is left behind, only that which exist on or in the bees is carried to the new colony. The new colony is then required to build new comb from scratch, new brood comb not containing disease harbouring cocoon. If you haven't read between the lines by now, I am a fervent (highly biased) believer in comb recycling. It wont cure all your disease problems but it sure well substantially reduce the impact of disease on your hives. And as for the cost of comb replacement. As hard as beekeepers try to keep brood combs out of honey supers it inevitably happens, and without all the connotations associated with this in terms of the risk of disease spread, a dark brood comb will send light honey darker than anything else I know of except heat. Generally the darker the honey the lower the price and so by comb replacement you offset this business loss which means more $/kg or $/lb for your product. Finally, for those who say that antibiotics are cheaper and easier. Antibiotics like most chemicals an interim measure until the bugs "figure" out a new strategy and become resistant to the chemicals. This problem exists right through all forms of monoculture be it crops, livestock or bees. We really aren't protecting our bees from disease we are really genetically selecting for chemical resistance in the enemy. We should adopt the strategy of the disease causing bugs and select for resistance in our queen breeding programs to restore the balance. Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that simply organisms like bacteria usually develop chemical resistance faster then complex organisms like bees. For those who might disagree with my logic, my beliefs are based on 22 years of beekeeping in which 10 were spent managing 2000 colonies and 7,000 mating nucs. Robert Rice. Apiculture Service Manager (South Island) Ministry of Agriculture Lincoln, New Zealand.