Someone recently asked about the prognosis for chilled queens. I was just speaking to one of my cooperator beekeepers and got the following story, which must qualify for an apicultural "believe it or not". A beekeeper was shaking the dead bees off the combs of a colony which had died over winter, to reuse the equipment. As he was moving one of the frames which had almost no bees on it, he noticed the queen alone on the face of the comb. He touched her and she moved a leg. He took her inside and put her on the kitchen table. As she warmed up, she started walking. He got a queen cage with a few workers and put her in. Next day, she was active in the cage. He put her with a frame of bees in an observation hive. She has recovered and has produced worker brood. It was 3 deg C the morning she was found on the comb. One queen doesn't make a generality, but I thought you might not have heard a story like this. (By the way, Nick Wallingford's experience with stunted wings, which he attributed to overheating, can also occur from chilling a cell on the last couple of days before emergence. There are probably others out there with more experience with this (I thought most queen rearers had experienced it). Some background to the beekeeper and the chilled queen: The beekeeper has 55 bee colonies which were found to have Varroa. In last year's September trials, we tried different treatments for the varroa, including liquid and gelled formic acid, and Apistan, but didn't realize til end of Sept, that tracheal mites had increased well beyond the damage threshold. At the last sampling in October, mite levels were down in colonies treated with formic, but by the slicing method, bees with dead mites still show "infested" so we didn't have a very good idea of the live tracheal mite populations. 12 of the 35 trial colonies died over winter. Treatment group Oct % * % winter March % Tr. mites mortality Tr mites Apistan 59 56 37 Formic liquid 25 0 2 Control 89 86 32 Formic gel 23 0 19 ** Dust 63 28 *** 74 *** * % of 50 bees examined per colony (includes some bees with treated mites) ** this would be 8 %, except for a hive which was beside a hive 96 % infested in October, from which the bees disappeared over winter. The surviving hive ended up at 80 % infested, likely because of mites brought by bees from the dying colony. *** Since March, an additional 57 % (overall total 86 %) have died or become non-viable colonies (the queens were rescued, as in the chilled queen report). Kerry Clark, Apiculture Specialist B.C. Ministry of Agriculture 1201 103 Ave Dawson Creek B.C. V1G 4J2 CANADA Tel (604) 784-2225 fax (604) 784-2299 INTERNET [log in to unmask]