Peter Bray wrote:

> What Dennis found is that HMD is a nutritional problem of the virgin queens,
> probably at the time of feeding after emergence and prior to mating.  This
> poor nutrition produces queens that have problems laying fertilized eggs and
> may in fact show up drone laying.

Interesting if one considers my posting on fat patties and the previous ones on
EFB showing up in  pollen poor pollination conditions. Perhaps we could narrow
this down to say that a lipid of sorts (or at least a fat soluble
substance/vitamin) is missing from the diet. What is interesting, though, is why
feeding fat will rectify the problem virtually immediately? Anyone doing work on
bee nutrition these days?

Robert Post