I would like to continue this line of conversation off the List.  Last
fall I put out a call for breeders who could provide hygienic queens and
got no response.
 
We are starting a two-year project on the effects of Microbial Pesticides
on honey bees.  We want to establish working relations with breeders who
can provide hygienic and non-hygienic lines at almost any time of the
year.  Since our testing is done in indoor isolation chambers with bees
in flight tubes, we will be testing in winter as well as summer.
 
Marla provided us some queens as did Sue Colby, but they can't provide
queens in the winter.
 
Marla warns that the test she uses (which Tabor and Gilliam pioneered) can
be misleading - wow is that ever true.  We found that freshness,
placement, whether the brood chunk was flush or proud, etc. affected the
results.  Gilliam and Tabor don't mention this.
 
Years ago, we tried the mash the bee approach.  You have to use something
fairly blunt so that you really do the job.  We marked our brood areas
with dressmakers pins.  Some colonies yanked these immediately.  If proud
of the comb, the pins were pulled, if low in cell they were sometimes
capped.
 
We also tried a styrofoam strip (measured consumption), a paper card in
brood nest, and other approaches.  Still looking for a reliably
reproducible test.  Would like to work with others on this problem.
 
Jerry Bromenshenk
The University of Montana
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