From: "Peter Schmoeker" <pschmoeker@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2001 20:19:39
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Hygienic behavior

Dee wrote:

>>To me this iunaturalal and disruptive to a colony and can only serve to
>>stimulate cleaning by destruction...

Dee,

The experiment's purpose was not to select for Hygienic behavior per se.
But was to see if hygienic behavior traits could be linked with a trait
where the bees would notice the varroa mite. This is what the experiment
accomplished. The bees selected from this experiment notice the varroa,
chew it up and eliminate it from the colony...up to 95%.
As far as being disruptive to the colony...your shaking down a colony to
select for 4.9 cell size in comparison seems quite a bit more strenuous.
But the end result is the same. On one hand bees are selected to build 4.9
cells and the other to notice and destroy the varroa mite.

>>We need bees to learn to identify LIVE larvae and to SAVE them...

First, I believe bees do quite well in identifying the live larvae,
otherwise the colony would not survive, but it IS important that bees
identify dead or diseased larvae QUICKLY so that whatever disease killed the larvae does not spread, whether it be from a virus, bacteria, or a parasite.

Regards,

Peter