Randy,

>>Ellis and Alianos experiments put the nail into the coffin of the 
acidic haemolymph hypothesis.  I'll send you a copy of my article.  
No one knows the action.

You've done a nice job on the article!

I am open to all hypotheses and I am sure one day soon we'll learn 
the precise mode of operation.  Re. possible ingestion, I'd think 
bees have to clean the syrup solution off themselves. It's hard for 
me to imagine that mere rubbing against other bees would satisfy the 
bees.  They would use their probosis to ingest [temporarily?] the 
syrup.

I am not sure if OA sugar syrup is so unpleasant to them that they 
would not do it at all but I have seen whitish looking syrup 
deposited in certain areas of the comb immediately after treatment 
and not eaten/removed up from those cells for weeks afterwards [were 
they waiting for the OA concentration to naturally drop before using 
this syrup?]...  Was it the OA syrup?  I did not want to taste it and 
did not have other means to analyze it.

Re. blood pH, I wonder if it would be easy enough to measure the pH 
before and after OA treatment...

Some folks have very interesting research to carry out indeed. :)

Waldemar
Long Island, NY

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