>I picked up freshly dead bees from the entrances and did a gut squash

Bill, this is not unusual.  It is normal behavior for highly-infected bees
to fly out to die.  To determine whether the colony as a whole has a high
degree of infection, you need to sample bees from inside.  Best is a 10-bee
sample, viewed one at a time, but the spore count of a 50-bee sample tends
to track the overall infection level.  You do not need a hemacytometer--see
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/field-of-view-count-correlation/




-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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