Frank: I passed along your grease pattie suggestion to a local BeeKeepers meeting just last night. One old timer has been doing the same thing and I think he seemed to be glad to hear of someone else doing it. I think that your approach to try something new on a hive or two to see how it works out, makes sense to me. I find it difficult to understand why anyone would trash or poo-poo someone's idea, especially with the high losses going around. I was told last night that Massachusetts losses are running 75% and Maine is running 90%! I was asked to do a talk on "Bees In Cyberspace". Naturally I touted Bee-L highly. I passed out a sheet on signing up for a Bee-L and included a couple of sample messages-yours on grease patties was one of them. Al Needham "Hobbyist" Scituate, MA