---- "J. Waggle" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 

> >...Jim F has occasionally suggest to people who doubt that bees "draw 
> foundation out" use a sheet of the colored stuff and see what they get.>
> 
> Might be interesting, but subject to judgment.

Everything is subject to judgement.  The question is, will the proposed "test" answer the question posed.

> I would think the results 
> from that experiment would certainly not be acceptable to anyone in the 
> scientific community.  

That depends entirely on the question you were attempting to answer.

> If you had a good scale, perhaps weighing a piece of foundation before and 
> after cells built would more decisive.  

Maybe, but then some wiseacre would start talking about the weight of propolis, cocoons and frass incorporated into the wax.

I think the color test, done, correctly would be very illuminating.  Not quantifiable, but illuminating none the less.

You could measure the concentration of pigment, melt down the comb, leaving behind the non-wax portion, and then see how diluted the pigment was after comb building if you were looking to publish this somewhere.  But for the purposes of answering the question "do bees pull foundation out, or merely add to it" the color foundation test would be more than adequate.  If you were looking to find out to what degree they did this in a variety of circumstances, for that you need a little more tech.  This is a pretty binary question.  They do pull foundation, or they don't.
Rigorous scientific testing with statistical analysis is great, but not necessary to answer all questions - the tough part is in figuring out which questions require which approach.

Keith

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************