I sincerely apologize to those that have been through this before, I would have dropped the thread a while back. However slowly day by day I have recieved some excellent offers of help via pm, I have also been contacted by several people who would like to run short articles on the research in various Bee publications.
For this reason alone i have kept the thread alive, overall the response behind the scenes has been beyond expectation so on balance it has been worth it.
Mr Finman I have been asked not to feed you, out of respect for the other members i am going to resist the temptation to educate you on some of your recent responses.
In my defence i feel i should respond to one accusation you have made.
You state I know nothing about bees, i find this unfair. I stated upon joining my credentials, I hold a PhD in both Bio Chemistry and Entomology, it is extremely unfair of you to expect an Entomologist to know about insects and Bees! I admit i have read few books on Bees or insects, I certainly never read the ones I have wrote myself!!
I did ask to be sent to Finland to be trained in your cutting edge techniques, however we didnt have the time or budget, also for some reason our managing director couldnt stop laughing long enough to sign the cheque, when i asked her.
I do however owe you one final thank you, I will share a story you reminded me of when you spoke of your yields. It brought back some fond memories of my early years.
Many many years ago when I was around 10 years old, my older brother was 16-17. I was the kind of kid who would change clothes anywhere or go swimming naked, my brother however always changed behind a locked door.
This would sometimes puzzle me when we went 'skinny dipping' and he would spend enormous amounts of time to find a place to change, he never went naked when swimming.
I remember asking him on a number of occasions why he was so shy, eventually he admitted that due to the enormous size of a certain appendage, he found it embarrassing to be naked in front of others. For many years i felt saddened by my brothers plight, his whispered tales of the nightmares he had strapping and concealing said appendage upset me, I also felt extremely guilty that i had been born normal and could walk around without shame.
Then around 15 years later we played squash one day at a local club, the club was new and to our horror the shower's and toilets were communal. My brother had to return to work and needed a shower, for the first time ever he had to shower in full view!!
This was the moment in my life i discovered some people are not very good at estimating size.
Regards
Dr J Bell
. I think maybe a less cruel one should be implemented in future lol.
