>
> >I was brought up to believe that honey
> bees could clean up just about any mess.


Ditto here!  But we were raised before varroa, Pete.  Adding varroa to the
equation changes everything about disease transmission, since the bee has
not yet adapted to the vectoring and stress added by this parasite.

Most viruses are apparently transmitted by ingestion, and drone brood is
often infected with viruses.

Re frame swapping, this is something that I do with great regularity as a
commercial beekeeper.  However, I'd prefer not to add additional swapping of
entire frames of killed brood.

Trevor, the logistics of removal, boxing, transport, return, and replacement
of frozen or irradiated combs are simply not cost effective at any larger
scale.

Re the reutilization of the protein, realize that bees wouldn't have built
full frames of drone brood unless the colony was overflowing with protein in
the first place.  They may not even be interested in ingesting the returned
killed brood (can someone with field experience comment?).  I also would be
concerned with the killed brood decaying during the interim between thawing
and reinsertion, especially during hot summer weather.

Randy Oliver

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