If a young gay person came up to me and said, ‘I was watching Still Game and I was thoroughly enjoying it until that word came on’, I would feed bad about that. If being an artist means replying, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about, you gotta roll with the punches’, then I guess I’m not an artist. A comedy show is there to make people feel good, feel warmth. I don’t think it’s there to make people feel bad. And that’s my general feeling about it.” Whits Fur Ye’ll No Go By Ye (What's for you, won't go by you) - Didn’t get that job you wanted? Well, this phrase is guaranteed to lift your spirits just a wee bit and remind you that something better is just around the corner and it’ll find you when you’re ready. Positive Scottish vibes! Only 20% of the mites survived one week under in vitro conditions, even on a 100% fat body diet. In contrast, mites fed haemolymph alone died within 48 hours. This poor level of survival was surprising and suggests other essential components of the diet were probably missing. The feeding position study is essentially correlative, but there could be other interpretations of the data. For example, that location on the bee might be the least accessible to a ‘grooming’ bee. Perhaps it’s a survival mechanism?

I accept that young people teach the old. I used to sit with my grandfather and he’d say something off-colour, about the Asian guy who ran the corner shop. I’d been sitting there for two hours, with him making me laugh and then saying something stupid. I was a young student, I knew more about these matters than he did, so I’d roll my eyes and say, ‘you can’t say that, grandad… .’ Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse. Of the three experiments presented, the Nile red fat body stain uptake by mites is reasonably compelling.Survival and fecundity in in vitro studies wasn’t great. However, in defence of the authors, fecundity of mites under natural conditions can be as low as 40% and is not higher than 80%. Not all mites have baby mites. Thankfully. I watched that recently, and I felt uncomfortable – and I wrote it! You’re in your mid-20s and that’s what you’re on about. But if people said ‘this has aged badly’, now I’d shrug my shoulders and say fair enough.” Miller H Caldwell has led a full life where it seems one event has led to another. He served the Society of Authors on their committee and was their events manager. He has previously published 32 books, amongst others, The Trials of Sally Dunning (Matador), and Penned Poetry for Parkinson’s Research (City Stone Publishers), which he was diagnosed with in 2021. Two books, A Lingering Crime and Caught in a Cold War Trap both have Los Angeles Film Scripts. He now lives in Dumfries, Scotland. Gonnae No Dae That prize draw It could work, but it would probably be more difficult to develop and test. The miticides we currently use are pretty good when you compare toxicity to bees vs. toxicity to mites. The ‘readout’ is also straightforward … you just ‘count the corpses’ (bees and mites). To develop an inhibitor of feeding you’d have to work out a way to determine whether it was working or not … you could wait until the mites starved, but that would probably take a long time. An additional problem would be to ensure that pupae received enough during their larval feeding stage to make them unpalatable to the mites within the capped cells.

It doesn’t bother me in the least. In the early 90s when Ford and I started our act in Glasgow, we were consciously against ‘end of the pier’ humour. We decided then not to do a comedy of hate or exclusion or othering people. So it’s natural progress for me. Having worked in Glasgow through the early noughties the title of this post was a no-brainer and an outline draft was written in December 2017. However, the peer-reviewed paper wasn’t published until last month, so it’s only now we’ve got the chance to judge the study and consider its implications. Varroa feed on hameolymph, right? Gonnae no dae that?This is a Scots expression imploring someone to stop doing something. Advice Miller H Caldwell definitely didn’t follow. Greg recalled another Chewin’ The Fat sketch which might well make the cutting floor in the future, for its use of the term “Jap’s eye” (slang, if you’re not aware, for the tip of a penis). “If you’re a young Japanese person living in Scotland watching this show, you’d react, WTF?! What the Ramsey paper adds is the piece of the jigsaw possibly explaining why late summer treatment is so important.

The other two studies, and a number of additional small observations I’ve not discussed here, are certainly supportive, but not alone hugely convincing. The in vitro study in particular will be interesting to compare with (currently unpublished) studies from other laboratories that do not use honey bee fat bodies in their mite feeding and maintenance diet. Practical matters Vitellogenin made by and stored in the fat body reduces oxidative stress and is associated with extending the longevity of overwintering bees. The fat body also has critical roles in metamorphosis. So, not only multi-functional, but also very important. Significance of the results … is this a game changer? Ex-Celtic star Victor Wanyama refuses to rule out stunning return to Parkhead one day as Spurs ace raves about time at Hoops From Scotland to Ghana, from lows to highs to lows again, Gonnae No Dae Thatis a celebration of a life lived to the full, one that took meaning from personal experiences and used them to better other lives. Inspirational reading for anybody who feels the need for greater meaning and greater adventures. About the author

A little over a year ago reports started to circulate of a study showing that Varroa feed on the fat body of bees rather than on haemolymph.If I don’t see you through the week (if I don’t see you soon) Made famous by Billy the window cleaner in the classic Scottish movie Gregory’s Girl “If I don’t see you through the week, I’ll see you through the windae”. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but it's a good way to say goodbye to someone.