The other day when I mailed on this I said about marking thousands of bees to trace their return (and suggested black & yellow strains of bees). I have just seen a photograph of a good proportion of the 4000 bees that are (were, I guess) being used to study swarming behaviour at Cornell University. All 4000 individually paint marked and numbered. Very pretty they all looked too. I gather they stuck the whole lot in the refrigerator to numb them and the set about with pots of coloured paint and numbered queen labels. I gather that as the bees warm up they get a bit tetchy. -- Gordon Scott [log in to unmask] 100332,3310 on CompuServe Newsletter [log in to unmask] ditto Beekeeper, Kendo Sandan, sometime sailor. Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG22 5HP, UK Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. (So do wasps -- and they like fruit flies too!).