Hello Martin & All,
Thanks to Martin for his reply.  If you look at the Baton Rouge bee lab web
site you can see the method used to find SMR. Very labor intensive and time
consuming.
http://msa.ars.usda.gov/la/btn/hbb/jwh/SMRD/SMRD.htm
We received a letter today from Dr.Harbo showing a problem which has risen
with the first batch of SMR queens. I will go into detail later when I have
read the letter. The letter came to our other queen rearing location. My
partner in queen raising received the letter about a hour ago and called to
tell me what John had said. Our queens have done excellent and we have not
noted the problem Dr. Harbo talks about. The good news in the letter is the
open mated daughters of the II queens are all showing degrees of SMR. My
partner and I were impressed to receive a letter from Dr.Harbo about his
progress and changes he is making in his program to improve the queens.
Honesty will get Dr. Harbo my support.
Sincerely,
Bob Harrison
Odessa, Missouri
Ps. Dr. Harbo explains his process at the above site. Even with my level of
beekeeping skills the process is complex. Quite a bit of the work involves
the microscope. After all Dr. Harbo is looking at the reproduction of a mite
the size of a pencil point.