quote Jon :Washing soda is the usual way to clean.

For a confirmed AFB infection I don't believe that 20% washing soda would be of much use in the case of poly hives. Washing soda will not destroy / sterilize AFB spores, which are highly resistant to destruction, but is used to aid washing surfaces clean from propolis and wax followed by a lot of rinsing then soaking in disinfectant the idea being to minimize the risk to an acceptable level by removing adhering propolis so that the surface can be disinfected, poly hives might have too many holes in the surface that would retain active AFB spores. In my opinion the only solution to sterilize poly would be to Burn, use irradiation or soak submerged in a barrel virkon-S overnight after scrubbing with soda. The chlorine in virkon might, i dont know, affect the poly box. Virkon-s is available in a safe tablet form and is not that expensive to prepare a 10% (10g/l) barrel load ( 40 gallons = approx 180 litres uses 1.8kg at £25-£30) which is only active USED freshly prepared. Alternatively one could use domestos bleach at a final 1% hypochlorite solution, you would need to check the hypo conc of the bleach bottle first which is usually around 4.5% (so you need to make a 1 in 4 to 5 dilution, one gallon bleach to 40 gall water, from the original bottle, again, an overnight soak is advised)

Its easier to use wooden boxes and a blowlamp.

Hope this helps a bit

Philip