From: "Helmut E. Garz" <hommes@olympus.net>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 19:36:24 -0700
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: Hygienic behavior

Peter
Kevin expressed what my understanding of the whole hole debate is all about, unless someone else applied it for a different purpose. However, this issue is barking up the wrong tree. It was observed that "SOME" bees indeed picked varroa and kart them off. The bees, as far as I am concerned cannot be trained to do what people want them to do. We just utilizing the behavior to our advantage, whatever the behavior is.

I have no problem with what you witnessed is indeed an observed fact. But
there always is somewhere a trade off in trying to manipulate breeding. The other observed feature is a frozen larva with a cell is / was cleaned out without the aid of a hole irrespective of size. The mite removal is nothing else but coincidental, one could argue. Lately one reads almost everywhere something about hygienic traits but I must take reserved view of all this. Who has the time, the money, the patience, the knowledge, the tools to conduct research in one's backyard.

And as far as research results is concerned, it serves me no purpose to KNOW that a bacterium or fungi kills chalkbrood, if it is not available on the market. And further, suppose I have a colony with has this hygienic trait, what happens downstream when one of the supercedures plays hanky panky with a BAAAD drone?
Happy beeing
Helmut