Message-id: <[log in to unmask]> On Dec 14 William G. Lord wrote: < We have heard a lot about the virtues of <hygienic behavior in bees, and now references are being made to <hygienic behavior and varroa resistance. Why isn't someone <breeding for and advertizing these traits? As a queen breeder I tried last srping to conduct a hygienic test on my bees. I had never done this before. I had some problems doing it. I would like to discuss these problems h ere. I was looking for a test that involves little labour because I wanted to run the test on a large number of colonies (200-300). My choice was to test all the offspring of my bre eders, not only my actual or potential breeders. Advised by Medhat Nasr from Guelph University , I decided to puncture 10 capped brood cells from each colony with a very fine nail, to mark t he test area and to come back 24 h later to count the number of cells that were not cleaned out. Th e results indicate me that the method needs adjustments. Queens from 16 lines were tested but ver y little variations were found. The queens from the best line cleaned 100% of the cells. Those fro m the worst line cleanes 91% on average. I suspect these results to be abnormally high and I thi nk that more brood cells should be killed to really show the good performers. I see another problem. If the age of the killed brood is not the same, the clea ning challenge is not the same. The tissues of a very young pupa are very soft compared to those of a n older one. A lot of caution should be used if individual colonies are to be compared.