Very recently there has been a shortage of European foulbrood (EFB) and American foulbrood (AFB) test kits. These lateral flow devices, available for 20 years, work like pregnancy test kits, give a result within a few minutes, and are acknowledged to have helped enormously in the fight against foulbrood.
Vita Bee Health is changing the manufacture of these kits because, after two decades of completely reliable use, a very small number (single figures) of a recent batch of EFB kits gave false-positive results, ie indicating that foulbrood was present when it was not. The batch numbers are AF01 and AF02.
There are no reports of false-negative EFB results, which would be a much more serious issue. So, users who have received a negative result after an EFB test, can be confident that this is accurate.
If in doubt about a positive test, we recommend that users in the UK send a sample to the National Bee Unit/FERA for confirmatory laboratory analysis.
Tests showing no disease present are still completely reliable.
Naturally, we have been investigating why this small number of false-positive results has occurred and believe it is a manufacturing issue, which is now being addressed. Further kits will not be available until we are confident that the issue has been resolved.
Although this means a temporary shortage of the products, purchasers can be assured that Vita will never release a product that does not do exactly what it is meant to do. Users can have complete confidence that when we do have new product, it will be as accurate, specific and reliable as ever.
