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!).