Chilled brood or foulbrood?

[CSbees]

I combined a nuc above an established colony with this colony after sellling my last queen of the season to a man who came on Sunday. Yesterday, when I was combining it I noticed some capped brood with punctured cappings. However, there was less than 500 bees, not adequate to warm the brood in there. They had stored a lot of goldenrod pollen. It had its distinct smell, often confused with that of foulbrood. This is a dubious situation indeed. Can anyone alarm or console me. I was a bit concerned.

[dcross]

Dig out the brood and send it to Beltsville. Cheap, fast, and accurate.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=7472

[dickm]

AFB kills in the pupal stage. If there is a "ropy" residue or a scale that you can't get out, without destroying the cell, it's AFB. AFB will be random but chilled brood will be around the edges.

Dickm

[CSbees]

I inserted a matchstick into one of the cells with a dead, visibly denaturing larva. The stick was wet with a brown watery substance. The residue was not by anymeans ropy.

[Jim Fischer]

Foulbrood smells MUCH worse than chilled brood that has
decomposed. Chilled brood is also going to be a larger
patch of dead brood than everything except the worst cases
of foulbrood.

The usual clues can also help here, the shrunken, punctured
cappings, the rubbery/ropey nature of the brood itself, all
the classic AFB clues are not going to be present in chilled
brood.