Hello Joe & All, I will reply as my quote was the first in your post to P.O.. My concern with many beekeeping observations concerns the number of hives involved. Many studies published in bee magazines involve as few as five hives. Dan Purvis ( Purvis Brothers apiaires ) which has done as much research on survivor bees as any beekeeper in the U.S. and I agree a study needs to be ran with at least fifty colonies and a hundred is better. My testing of survivor bees was done with three lots of 100 different survivor queens and two lots of fifty survivor queens from different queen breeders. I based my statement on four years of observing those five queen lines. Four of those tests involved Russian bees. To sum the results up 425 queens kept small clusters and shut down brood rearing with every change of the weather. I found a single exception. In the spring I will see what the offspring are like. She is Russian/Russian. I brought 26 instrumentally inseminated "blue" line Russian queens back from Purvis Brothers several years ago. Three of us took turns inseminating the queens that day at Purvis Brothers so without checking her number with Purvis records I am not sure which one of us inseminated her. Both the queen and drone source were from Glenn apairies II Blue line Russian queens. Her hive wintered on 12 frames of bees last winter and I made two splits from the hive this spring. The hive produced over 150 pounds of honey when we saw the worst honey production ever in Missouri. Hard to find a varroa mite in her hive but every once in a while I can find a varroa in her drone brood. The hive has not been treated. One out of 426. I hate to think what it cost to find her. I put a hive tool to the other 25 II queens I brought back ( and many of the other 400). I read of a beekeeper in Germany which used the "live and let die method" and found a single hive alive out of 850. He based his queen breeding on the single queen and now has varroa tolerant bees. I do not know if his bees were prolific or not. I would guess not. I am a profit minded beekeeper and not interested in bees which are not prolific. I need bees I can rent for pollination. I look at many hives each year both of mine and other beekeepers. This week I traveled to Nebraska with two other beekeepers to depopulate 350 hives considered not worth hauling to Texas. All were started this spring as strong splits with new queens. We took every frame from every hive. one strong/one weak and one in the middle. All treated by the commercial beekeeper exactly alike. Privately researchers tell me their test hives are similar. Or as a beekeeper says when asked of the condition of his hives. " Some weak, some strong and some in between" My point is we can not read absolute truths about beekeeping without field trials (with controls) and a large number of hives. Then the experiment needs repeating and the results should be the same. Stress and added varroa pressure lets the queen breeder see which survivor line can resist varroa. Dan Purvis adds frames of varroa infested brood to hives considered for varroa tolerant breeder queens. I add the stress factor. I have not ever seen a experiment published (other than mine and Dan's) which involved stress & adding extra varroa to the hive. Hives in most USDA experiments sit in a single location by researchers and are feed both syrup & pollen patties. The hives of yours, Dee's and Dennis M. are never moved. Are never placed in areas of thousands of varroa infested hives with drifting drones. Dennis Murrel has suggested I test small cell. He has suggested a way I can test on a large scale with a small investment so I believe I will do the test next spring. I am going to take 25 pounds of small cell foundation and wire into new frames ( yuk!) and place in super strong hives at the height of brood rearing in May. Two to a hive or around 80+ hives involved. Once drawn and the queens lay in I will go in and pull pupa at the purple eye stage and observe and see what you are seeing ( or not). Dennis says the experiment is worth doing and I should see what you small cell people are seeing. Comments? Sincerely, Bob Harrison Missouri " Show me state" -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---