I went down to the university of Maryland due to a training that I was interested in. This training was to work for the Bee Informed Partnership. I am now on the list for the mobile tech team. What this means is that periodically I can be called upon to go to various location around the USA and Inspect beehives. 

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The training consisted of a few different actions. The first was to enter the hive and count number of frames of bees. This meant that We look down the brood boxes from the top and bottom and estimate number of bees. This gives us a estimate of population in the beehive. The second step is to rate the quality of the brood pattern this is so that we can judge quality of queens. We rate them from 0-5. 0 does not mean it is a bad pattern it means there was no brood to judge. The last sample is to take a hygienic test by pouring liquid nitrogen through a PVC tube. Coming back the next day we count the amount of cells that have not been cleaned out. 

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Before the hygienic test we count number of cells that are uncapped. after the test we count number of cells that were uncapped due to the nitrogen minus the cells that were already uncapped. This give us a score of highly hygienic to not hygienic at all. This hygienic test is a good indicator to see if the bees are hygienic towards Chalkbrood and AFB. Test are still being done to determine if this is correct.