Steve,

> It is not uncommon to see foragers roaming the frames with a pollen load as they have not yet met up with the appropriate house bee to transfer their load to.

First the house bees do not unload the pollen from the workers, the
worker does this herself, she kicks it off her legs into a cell.

> Perhaps I missed some vital prior discussion, however is that not making a pretty large leap?

The article states "In a just published paper, researchers say
infected bees were 4.3 times less likely to be carrying pollen than
uninfected bees, and carried less pollen when they did."

I do not think it is a big leap to think that a bee coming into the
hive with a very small load of pollen may be sick. Though it could
depend on circumstances, today I saw a worker returning with a very
small load of pollen. It had started raining so I blamed the weather
not the health of the bee. If it had been a nice sunny day when a
worker normally would not have returned to the hive until her pollen
baskets were full, I may have taken that bee home to put under the
microscope to check for nosema.

Karen T-K

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