If Bill Lord is going out into "the bush" where he will not have LN2, and he wants to do the best job of killing brood possible without detectable damage on the outside of the comb, why not use electricity?

Zach Huang of MSU (bees AT msu DOT edu) invented the "Spartan Mite Zapper", which is a simple nichrome wire heating element built into a "drone brood" comb.  One could rig up the same sort of thing on a portion of a plastic sheet of worker foundation and selectively kill the specific cell areas on the frame that were pre-wired.  

I do not know if Zach's product makes a detectable change in the surface of the comb or not, but I assume that there is a temperature that will kill sealed brood without melting the wax.  Something above 100F but below 140F - 150F.

The bees have to first draw out the comb, and you'll need a 6-volt motorbike or 12-volt car/truck battery to kill the brood, but batteries are pretty easy to find in even the most far-flung places.  6-volt "lantern" batteries could also be brought in and used, singly, or in series to make 12 Volts, and would likely last for a goodly number of dozens of tests.

I've found that Perma-Dent is much thinner, and therefore, much more quickly drawn out than other, thicker plastic foundation, so there's your base material.  Nichrome wire is what toaster heating elements are made from, so it is very cheap.  Wooden frames would be a must, as you'll want to cut grooves in which to run the fragile wires, and put some terminal posts on the frame to which one would attach the "jumper cables".

Zach's a nice guy, and would likely send you enough info to rig up a less-than-full-frame version of his mite zapper.  You'd likely need to work out how many inches of wire you want, look at resistance per inch various wire sizes, and then match the net resistance of one of Zach's entire frames to make sure you hit Zach's same brood-killing minimum temperature.  If this sounds too hard, e-mail me off-list.

Given the hassle of messing with LN2, this may extend Zach's product line with a new "gold-standard" for Hygienic testing. 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html