Kevin found a paper everyone else missed: http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2 Fjournal.pone.0016217&representation=PDF or http://tinyurl.com/nc9gnne The title seemed to be a good explanation for the high supercedure rates among new queens that we have noticed in uber-urban settings, where local mating is problematic, and Jeff Pettis (USDA) has noticed when trying to implement season-long studies. But the title of the paper ("Viruses Associated with Ovarian Degeneration...") seems to be flatly contradicted by the plain language of the findings of the study. They could find no virus that associated with or correlated to ovarian degeneration. The authors also did not find a link between the viruses infecting the queens and actual queen egg-laying performance as evaluated by the beekeepers: "5. DWV Titre In Mated Queen Ovaries is Unrelated to Queen Age, Ovarian Degeneration or Fecundity Problems We used RT-qPCR to estimate the DWV titres in all the 130 mated queens analysed here and related these to their biological and pathological data. For these analyses, the entire queen was used. Although a very wide range of DWV titres was observed among these queens, there was no significant difference in the median DWV titre between queens of different age, between queens with or without fecundity problems or between queens with yellow coloration in their ovaries (Table 2 and Figure 4)." But "extensive lesions that appear at dissection level as masses of yellowish material in the germinal part of the ovaries." and "masses of yellowish material in the germinal part of the ovaries" do not seem to be a good thing at all However, yellow-colored follicles are supposed to be normal to some extent. When eggs are laid, the emptied follicle collapses, and produces a "corpus luteum" ("yellow body") as part of a normal process. I can only conclude that what was called "lesions" were in addition to the normal "used follicles". This area would be a good target for some more advanced genetics work, in that the massive numbers of virus particles clogging things up might have more subtle impact on egg laying, or might only become catastrophic for egg laying at some very high level of infection. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html