Hello All,
Those interested in the Cape bee problem in SOUTH AFRICA will find the
following abstract interesting.

http://www.edpsciences.org/articles/inra-apido/pdf/2002/01/Martin.pdf

Although the abstracts main focus is cell size  and varroa d.  quite a bit
of information can be gleaned about pseudo-clones.

I remember before varroa hit the U.S. I had trouble getting my fellow
beekeepers to even discuss varroa. The situation changed when varroa began
to ravage bee outfit after bee outfit. Varroa was all they wanted to talk
about.

It will take another couple decades in my opinion for the pseudo-clones IN
SOUTH AFRICA to parasitise all other races. After reading the abstract
several times trying to understand the abstract I want to be the first to
make a prediction  that  in 20 years time the pseudo-clones will be the only
bee in South Africa UNLESS the capensis problem is solved.

BEE-L is forever (hopefully)  so lets see in 20 years if Bob Harrison's
prediction in 2002 proves correct.

If you look at the charts presented you can see the pseudo-clones handle
varroa better. The article states with the pseudo-clones very few fertilised
varroa are produced which would result in very slow ,if any, growth of the
varroa population.

One interesting chart presented by Martin (2002) showed that pseudo-clones
fore wings were longer than A.m. scutellata workers by around 8%.

Martin does say that reducing cell size as a varroa control will *probabbly*
fail to be effective and gives the reason for his conclusion..

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison