Abstract
Clinical signs of American Foulbrood can be difficult to diagnose and thus disease is missed and leads to further spread. Diagnosis is centred on the beekeeper’s skill in recognising clinical symptoms – a highly subjective and time-consuming activity. Previous testing methods have relied on sampling that necessitates dismantling the hive and/or requires multiple visits to retrieve passive samples. The Foster method is a new environmental DNA sampling method using entrance swabs together with a dual-target qPCR for AFB. The quantification data generated can be used to detect hives with clinically relevant infections, even when no visual symptoms are apparent. Such a method will be applicable to other bee pathogens and incursion pests.
Importance Discovery of the disease American foulbrood typically means the destruction of the bees and hive by burning. This discovery is typically by visual examination of capped brood by the beekeeper - a subjective skill that means the disease is being missed or not recognised. It is a time-consuming and exacting process to inspect hives for AFB. Here we present a rapid sampling method that does not require opening/dismantling the hive in conjunction with a dual target quantitative PCR assay for the bacteria responsible, Paenibacillus larvae. Using the resulting quantitative data, hives presenting clinical symptoms or likely to become clinical visually can be determined and the hives dealt with appropriately before further spread occurs.