[rmetzler]

I just read about this on [0].

This method is a little bit more complicated than you describe it. I’m also not sure how easy it is to scale.

You still need to destroy parts of the beehive, let all the bees hunger for a few days and disinfectant the parts of the beehive you want to reuse. I don’t know if all of this is possible with that many beehives mentioned in the post.

[0] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstschwarmverfahren

[frankzander]

As far as I know this method is done by commercial beekeepers. Well at the end you are have to choose to burn it all and face big investment or to invest work. It's right that the artificial swarm has to "hunger" a bit. At the end you get no honey from the bees and have to invest in new frames and sugar. It's no visit in the candy store if you have AFB but burning everything seem to be a last resort solution which isn't nowadays necessary anymore. The other problem you are facing are the beekeepers around you ... they have to do the same and than there are some black sheep which are not known to the veterinary administration. They can also contribute to a never ending AFB problem.

At the end hygiene (torching unused hives and frames) is the first thing everybody can do to prevent such situation.