Jim said: "Chill down one set of bees, remove antennas with
    a very tiny pair of wire cutters, and attach those
    little numbered tags to each bee.  (Disgusting and
    cruel, but so is letting a colony die as a "control"
    in a varroa study. "

This is horrible - and being less horrible than another crime is no defence.
(I can strangle my wife, can I, because burning her to death would be
worse?).

To the onlooker, like me, it seems strange that definitive expweriements
have not been carried out, using just an observation hive, a feeding station
with two bowls of identical sugar syrup except one is 'pure' and the other
has an added ordor, and a thin wire cage just big enough for a returning
forager to be imprisoned but able to run up and down (with a turning chamber
at each end) but not waggle.   Would that not be enough for every
combination of odor/ no odor/ waggle / no waggle / up wind / down wind/ to
be tested?

Could someone just remind us - briefly and succintly - just what the problem
is that makes this particular observation of bee behaviour so intensely
difficult? (Not the arguments again - just why in principle it is apparently
so difficult to resolve).

Robin Dartington

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