Randy wrote I'm not sure that you followed my drift on isolation. the problem with testing for mite resistance is that the group with more mites will feed mites to the other group f they are in the same yard, and lessen the differences between groups. Clearly, if you study mite development in isolated bees, or africanized bees, whatever information you glean may simply not be applicable to non-isolated bees nor to European bees. Further, we cannot find that degree of isolation in NY state unless you go into the Adirondacks, where there are almost no bees. But there is a reason there are no bees: there isn't any forage. Similarly, we cannot use africanized bees around here, because they also require isolation. (Aside from the fact that they are illegal in NYS) Pete *********************************************** 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 Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm