>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 *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html