In brief, "absolutely nothing". While I'm sure Paul Stamets is sure to be a fungi to hang out with, I can state from excruciatingly expensive personal experience that the claims of Kanga (USDA) about the efficacy of Metarhizium anisopliae as a varroa control were not able to be replicated by anyone, including Kanga himself. There was also another soil bacteria named " Hirsutella thompsonii Fisher" (no relation, its spelled differently), that initially seemed equally promising, but did not perform as hoped on actual varroa. In 2006, the National Honey Board funded Rosalind James of USDA to make one last try, just to verify that there wasn't some strain of Metarhizium that might be of some value to beekeepers. I provided far more detail on this way back in 2008. (Love that archives search tool): http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=BEE-L;e0e7fe98.0 808B http://tinyurl.com/lsyd9b3 And note that when one watches the video of Mr. Stamets claims about bees, one sees other videos by Mr. Stamets were also on YouTube, with titles like "Paul Stamets - Mushroom Science NO Trace of Cancer", "Paul Stamets - The Future is Fungi [how to save the planet]", "Paul Stamets - Solutions from the Underground: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World", and so on. There's also "fungi.com", where, no surprise, you can purchase not only various potions and lotions, but you can get into the pyramid scheme of "growing mushrooms" by buying all the "supplies" you need from him. I simply don't have mushroom in my day for salesmen like this one. What he proposes in regard to bees has already been completely debunked multiple times. The claims are thereby more implausible than those made about "Bulletproof Coffee". And what were his bees gathering from the mushrooms? Moisture! Fungi get and stay very damp from the dew well into late morning, check for yourself. *********************************************** 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