Nosema Lab instructions

The purpose of this lab is to determine if any Nosema is present within your bee hive. Nosema is a fungal infection of bees akin to the human common cold but can be quiet serious for a hive. A method that can BEE used to test for nosema is collecting a sample of bees, crushing them in a mortar and pestle and examining your sample under a microscope to directly identify nosema spores in the bee's intestines. The number of spores in a bee's digestive system can be determined using a heamocytometer, a grid in which you count the number of spores in a square and multiply that number by four million.