Hello Barry,

 Your smr hives have not been
> treated with any chemicals? This is encouraging if so. Does this make a
full  2 years yet that you have had these bees?

 No.  We got our breeder queens from Glenn Apiaires early July last year.
grafted and installed about 125 SMR queens in hives. I have got 25 and my
partner started at least a 100 last fall. He has started others this spring
but I do not know for sure how many. Mine have never been treated but not
sure about his. We work together till pollination is done and then run our
seperate outfits.

>, how [some] officials  (Jackson) are relying on comb size to determine
whether a hive is  Africanized or not.

Paul Jackson is an excellent bee inspector and was using the methods taught
to him. I have heard Paul talk many times. Paul was trying to give the Texas
beekeepers a simple method they could use in the field to check for AHB. I
see nothing wrong with the method but wrong conclusions could occur if the
swarm was from a area close to a apiary of bees on 4.9mm foundation. Dees
bees are 10% smaller and are drawing 4.9mm foundation and could be seen as
AHB using Paul's method.
However the Fabis method used by the USDA to document counties as AHB is
based on wing venation and is accurate in a range of 60% (low estimate by
Mexican researcher) to a high of 95% ( by USDA.researchers). DNA testing is
always accurate and not subject to human error like the FABIS test. DNA
testing was used but  not sure the exact number times. I was told once that
if a swarm testing positive for AHb then the sample was sent on many times
for DNA confirmation but can not remember which researcher told me so right
now.

All talk of AHb in Arizona can not be dismissed as USDA FABIS testing
errors. Many DNA tests have been run in Arizona. Always when a stinging
incident happens I have been told.

I personally care little about scutellata gene ahb. My concerns are with
capensis genes getting into the gene pool.

bob