Background: American Foulbrood (AFB) is a devastating disease of honey bee (Apis mellifera) larvae caused by the spore-forming, Gram-positive bacterium Paenibacillus larvae. In most countries, the law requires mandatory reporting of AFB to the veterinary authority.
Aim and methods: To speed up detection and genotyping of P. larvae spores, we compared different culturing protocols on Columbia sheep blood agar and developed a new multiplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction to distinguish between the two relevant P. larvae genotypes enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) I and ERIC II.
Results and conclusion: As confirmed by P. larvae reference strains and field isolates, the new identification and genotyping protocol halves the time of current workflows, lessens labor-intension, allows a higher throughput of samples for monitoring, and permits a faster intervention to prevent the spread of AFB.
Keywords: American Foulbrood; ERIC genotyping; Multiplex quantitative PCR; Paenibacillus larvae; Rapid detection.