# Queen & DCA's



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Does this mean that the queen bypasses DCA's Within a few miles or close to the bee yard? 

From everything I've read the answer would be, usually.


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## Jerry J (Jan 12, 2004)

Sorry to repeat my Question but I did a search of Beesource and have not come up with anything of Value on Drone Congragation Area's. Dr. Marla Spivac emvacized in Queen Breeding to Saturate with Good Drones. With all the queen breeders on Beesource does no one do this?


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

I agree completely with Michael's firmly stated and unequivocable answer "Usually"









I've been looking into this too, in my copious spare time. From what I can gather, any attempt to "saturate" an area with drones is unlikely to have the desired effect unless you happen to be in a truly isolated area where there just aren't any other drones. That situation is not likely to occur.

I ran across an interesting article in the February 2004 APIS-UK Newsletter (the section on DCA's is about 3/4 of the way down the page which contains more interesting and relevant information on DCA's and virgin's mating than any other single source I've found to date:

http://www.beedata.com/apis-uk/newsletters04/apis-uk0204.htm 

That said, it's a pretty short article







To their credit, they point out that "We still actually know very little about these phenomena and the paucity of research on the subject doesnt help matters."

Among other facinating things mentioned in this article is the statement, backed up by research and cited studies:

"Drones prefer DCAs that are nearest to the hive and queens prefer DCAs that are furthest away from the hive and so the drones and queen from a hive do not choose the same DCA."

George-

[ January 11, 2006, 09:33 AM: Message edited by: George Fergusson ]


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## wfarler (Jul 9, 2003)

Is it possible to scout and find a DCA? Can you see them without special equipment? I have heard that they are often at the end of a long line of trees? Other clues? How high to the drones patrol?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Here's what I'd do. Get a helium balloon and a queen in a cage or soak some cotton balls in some queen lure (old queens soaked in alcohol) and attach the queen (or the psuedo queen) to the balloon and the ballon to a fishing line on a fishing pole. Start in mid or late afternoon. Start at your apiary and find the tree lines around and troll up and down a bit looking for drones. The ones I've seen were about 30 to 50 feet up. If you get a "comet" then try following that treeline going away from your apiary and see if you keep getting more or less. See if you can follow it to a DCA.


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## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

MB,
Have you tried this?
Are you just trying to get someone to do this stunt and report back here?
The picture in my head is very amusing!
That said, its probably a good idea.
come on, someone give it a try and take pictures!








binoculars are in order
I nominate George since he has the most 'free time'.

[ January 11, 2006, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: MichaelW ]


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Have you tried this?

I watched someone else do it in person. And saw a slide show presentation from another person who did it. No, I have not.

>Are you just trying to get someone to do this stunt and report back here?

That would be nice too. Look out for power lines.


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

If queens from yards that you are trying to mate fly further than the closest DCA, wouldn't it be a good idea to make yards further out containing the drones you wish to mate to? That way you would end up with the mating you want, rather than the queen bypassing your "local" drones to mate with ones further out that you don't want them to mate with?


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## Hook (Jun 2, 2002)

I think its pretty hard to say where a queen will fly. I'm sure if you had the time and energy to do the ballon stunt, you could find out for sure, or you could just put alot of drone comb into the colony that you want your queens to mate with. Surely if you saturate the area, you may get one drone to mate with her. Now, about the other 15-20, I don't know. I'm sure you will get a good cross section of what your area has to offer. Putting the odds in your favor does help though. I've been doing it the last 5 years, and I am slowly getting the type of bee I desire. I am also getting some of the undesireable as well, and there is not alot I can do about it.


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>or you could just put alot of drone comb into the colony that you want your queens to mate with.

The survival of the species pretty much depends on such a ploy NOT working. Honey bees figured out a long long time ago how to avoid inbreeding on anything like a regular basis. We presume this is why drones from a hive fly as short a distance as possible to a DCA and virgins from the same hive fly as far as they can in the other direction to get mated.

The studies that have been done show it is very improbable that a virgin will mate, under natural/normal circumstances, with their brothers. This is not an accident.

Sure, as Peggjam suggests, we might be able to obtain the mating result we want by widely separating the desired drone-source from our virgin-source so that the "near by" DCA from the drone's perspective is "far away" from home from the virgin's perspective, but I suspect even this clever attempt would be foiled by circumstances over which we have no control and/or factors in mating about which we are clueless. It migth work, probably won't. We can't point a virgin in a specific direction, toward a cloud of awaiting drones milling around a DCA at a place of our choosing.

The dynamics of queen mating have not gone unstudied, but attempts to date to control the outcome of open mating have failed. Gregor Mendel of Sweet Pea fame tried to mate queens in a large screened cage. Didn't work. Instrumental insemination is the ticket if you absolutely gotta get a virgin mated with a specific drone. If you had access to a sufficiently isolated island with no wild honey bees on it, you'd do OK. Some of those German videos mentioned in the Diseases/Pests forum talk about shipping virgins in tiny mating nucs to some isolated island preserve for controlled mating. It can be done. It's not simple.

>Get a helium balloon...

The link I provided above has a picture of this setup including the fishing rod. Michael's not crazy









I've already decided to try and chase down a DCA next season after a previous thread on DCA's and dowsing. I will employ the balloon/fishing rod trick. I'm not crazy either









George-


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## Jerry J (Jan 12, 2004)

A Hopeful thought,My breeder Queen's Daughters, drones should carry the hygenic and SMR genes that I want and someones Queens six to ten miles away coming my way might breed with my drones which should take the traits home. If my next generation queens travels their direction I could pick up 50 per cent hygenic and SMR traits. Could help everyone in a eight mile radius of home. Might just be dreaming


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## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

makes perfect sense to me.


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

Actually, the remote wanted drone source might work if you spaced your drone yards around the virgin queen's home yard. Rather than just putting a yard in one direction, put multiple yards in a 360 degree radius of the queens home yard. 8 yards should do it!! One or two hives per yard, there ya go, problem solved. LOL


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

You Go Peggjam


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## mwjohnson (Nov 19, 2004)

O.K. I think I'm gonna need more bees








Does anyone know how/if geography factors in to DCA location?

My area here is basically a series of narrow valleys with around a 600-800ft. diference in elevation of hilltops& bottom land.

Would outyards up the valley and down the valley be sufficent?

Old beek's here say to place your bees in the valleys,the logic being that the bees get to forage uphill and return loaded downhill(less work,I guess).

Any thoughts?

Mark Johnson


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## wfarler (Jul 9, 2003)

The research cited in this link have it the other way around - drones fly maximum distance they can.

http://www.funpecrp.com.br/gmr/year2002/vol3-1/gmr0043_full_text.htm

"In honey bees, the male mating strategy entails flights to distant drone congregation areas (DCAs) where drones may meet virgin queens (Ruttner and Ruttner, 1972; Gries and Koeniger, 1996). "


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## wfarler (Jul 9, 2003)

As you probably know, honey bee mating takes place high in the air, in sites which remain the same from year to year. The drones congregate in
these sites, and hang around waiting for virgin queens to fly in looking to mate (sound familiar?). Well the other day I threw a rock through a Drone Congregation area near here, and the drones followed after it in the typical
"comet" configuration. It got me to thinking, so I shot a bullet through the DCA. A couple of extremely fast drones caught up with it. I didn't think much more about it until today when I was in the area, and came upon a whole
nest of bee-bee guns!


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>Does anyone know how/if geography factors in to DCA location?

Everything I've heard suggests geography and surface features influence the choice of a location for a DCA. I can't tell you what or how. Perhaps next season after I've spent a little time chasing down a DCA I can offer more insight. There's probably more involved than we can imagine.

>Would outyards up the valley and down the valley be sufficent?

It might, but the DCA(s) might be located in the opposite direction from your hives, or the queen might go "over the hill"







Who knows! I'd go find the DCA(s) in the area first and then put some hives near them.

>The research cited in this link have it the other way around - drones fly maximum distance they can.

I don't interpret that quote or anything else in that paper (great paper by the way) in a way to suggest drones fly as far away as they can to congregate.

[ January 18, 2006, 06:29 AM: Message edited by: George Fergusson ]


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## wfarler (Jul 9, 2003)

>The research cited in this link have it the other way around - drones fly maximum distance they can.

>I don't interpret that quote or anything else in that paper (great paper by the way) in a way to suggest drones fly as far away as they can to congregate.

I too had difficulty understanding the authors comments 'drones fly maximum distance they can'
I attempted to access the two papers cited Ruttner and Ruttner, 1972; Gries and Koeniger, 1996 but ended up in a dead end. Guess you have to be an academic to get access to this stuff and even 1996 is still pretty old to be fully internet published.

I did find another study that indicated drones fly approximately 15 km/hr and their flight to the DCA lasts under 10 minutes. That implies they would be flying less than 2 km (1.2 miles). The same study put the maximum flying time at around 25 minutes (6.25 km)but not sure if that has any bearing on how far they fly to a DCA.


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

Well, DCA's seem to be where ever they are. Some drones will have futher to fly to get to them, other drones will not have to fly as far. I don't see how they can say categorically that 'drones fly maximum distance they can' to get to a DCA. Don't make sense. Drones fly to a DCA and then hang out for the afternoon. Think of it as a fuel limit. They've got to have enough fuel to be able to reach the DCA, circle for an hour or so, and then return.


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## wfarler (Jul 9, 2003)

There has been mention of how do you overcome AHB through drone saturation, etc. I thought I would copy over a post from Dee Lusby off Bee-L. 

Waldemar writes:
What is a mating breakout?

Reply:
It means that European honeybees normally on LC Combs vs more natural ferals, or European honeybees on SC combs, or even so-called AHBs have different mating parameters, so to dilute you have to be in the same pond and/or similar flight aerodynamics.

Respectfully submitted,

Dee A. Lusby
Small Cell Commercial Beekeeper
Moyza, Arizona


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

So bascily what she's saying is that they have to be of similar size in order to mate? That theory would in part address the reasons that AHB genitics have not been watered down by EHB genes in the last 20+/- years in this country?


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## wfarler (Jul 9, 2003)

> http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/sizematingpreference.html

Dave's interpretation is that Large will mate with large and small will mate will small or large. This might provide 1 piece of the puzzle of why AHB is watering down the EHB rather than the other way around.

Other pieces of the puzzle include other behaviours and flying ability (speed, height, stamina)


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

And the time window when the drones fly...


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## Blue.eyed.Wolf (Oct 3, 2005)

If you go with the idea of putting your queen yard in the center, and your drone hives in a circle around it, How far out should your drone hives be from the center?


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## Blue.eyed.Wolf (Oct 3, 2005)

never mind.....found it---> 3 mile radius


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## Robert Hawkins (May 27, 2005)

How isolated is your area? If there are no bees within 15 miles of your queen yard, 3-5 miles ought to do it. Do what? Give you control over what drones she mates with. If there are other yards in the mix, you can still attempt to flood the area with your drones.

I may try this. My Italians were golden when I got them.

Hawk


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

There's so much we don't know about queen mating and how a DCA is formed where it is formed, I think it's just a matter of chance if any of the desired drones actually end up mating with your queens, no matter where you put the hives.

For example, in an area with a "normal" number and distribution of honey bee colonies, on average, how many DCAs are there going to be? One? More than one? Where are they going to be located? Why? Which drones are going to congregate at which DCA? Will all drones from a given apiary congregate at the same DCA? Which DCA will supply drones to mate with any given queen? How do the queens decide where to fly and where not to fly? What behavioral mechanisms are at work to keep a virgin from mating with her brothers?

We don't know the answers to any of these questions- at least I don't. We only have a few generalities to go by, and even those are open to question and still need further research for a complete understanding: Many queens succeed at open-mating. Drones typically fly to the closest congregation area. Queens typically fly towards more distant congregation areas, or at least they try to avoid the areas where drones from their own hive congregate. We know that inbreeding is bad practice and that for the most part, bees have a means of avoiding doing this. How?

I've been thinking about this for a while now in relation to a thread on another list about the timing of raising queens and how to know when you have enough sexually mature drones available for mating with your queens. The assumption of the conversation is that your drones will mate with your virgins. Do we know this?


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

IMHO, I don't think there is a way to make absolute sure that the queens mate with the desired drones, other than AI. However, we can tilt the table in our favor by saturating the area with drones that are desirable. Maintaining outyards with the desirable drones is one way of doing this, but I think you would need to "surround" the mating yard with these drones to do it. Finding the DCA's in your area would certainly help in achieving this goal. The drawbacks that are apparent to me would be the feral bees in your area, unless you could locate and remove all of them, there is bound to be some mating with these bees. But that might not be such a bad idea anyway, just to mix it up alittle. The other drawback is your neibor beekeep that doesn't have the same strain that you have. One way to cure that is to give them some of the queens that you would like your drones to come from. You could actually accomplish some of your drone hives this way, and it might cut down on the number and locations of nessacery hives, if you can talk them into using your queens. Open mating is a gamble, you just have to take the good with the bad.


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

I guess that was my point Peggjam. I'd already decided that I was going to search for a DCA this coming season. Now I intend to find as many drone congregation areas around here as I can next summer. I plan to start with a topo map and plot the direction drones head out from various apiaries- mine and others- and see if I can locate some. I expect some measure of success at this task, assuming I don't run out of steam









The next trick would be to figure out where in general my queens are going to get mated. This might be more difficult. The only thing I can think of doing is again, trying to spot virgins leaving on their mating flights, seeing what direction they go, and timing their round trip. This is a lot easier said than done as I've got less time for this than it would take. I just might get lucky.


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

Survallance camras LOL!!!!!!!!


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## adamf (Jan 28, 2006)

Hi.
Bottom line with breeding honey bees at this point in time:

If you cannot control the mating, you are not going to be able to make very good progress in selection for desirable combinations.

Saturating an area with drones seems like a highly feasable idea but does it actually work? It did for Brother Adam on the Dartmoor and it has on some islands, however, hoping that virgins you produce will be mating with drones from your desirable colonies is less-than-positive and then introduces so much variance into the output. Yoe never really know what you are working with.

Name any other animal that is bred with success where the pedigree of the sperm contributing parent is possibly unknown. A virgin inseminated with the semen from one drone (single drone mating)is the most similar to normal animal breeding.

I'm not against drone saturation--they do this quite well in Germany. There's just that much more potential for crosses that are undesirable with open matings when selecting. 

When radio/signal equipment gets small enough to mount on virgin queens without distrubing their flight, the mysteries of DCA's will finally be solved.

Adam
[email protected]


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## Jerry J (Jan 12, 2004)

You can influence this in two ways...

By raising queens and drones at a time of year when the surrounding bees 
are not doing so.

Or you can raise your virgins and drones behind excluder screens and 
release them late in the day after the majority of flying has finished, 
that way mating is likely to be more local and with a much stronger 
chance of being with 'your drones'.
An answer from Dave Cushman of the Irish Beekeepers in reply to my question on DCA's
Jerry


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

<Or you can raise your virgins and drones behind excluder screens and 
release them late in the day after the majority of flying has finished, 
that way mating is likely to be more local and with a much stronger 
chance of being with 'your drones'.>

Hmmmm.....I wonder how well that would work?


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

>By raising queens and drones at a time of year when the surrounding bees are not doing so.

There's probably a very good reason why the surrounding bees aren't raising queens.

>If you cannot control the mating, you are not going to be able to make very good progress in selection for desirable combinations.

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. I'm not conversant enough with bee breeding and genetics to mount an argument, it just doesn't strike me quite right. It seems to me that people have been breeding honeybees and selecting for desirable traits through open mating for a very long time.


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## adamf (Jan 28, 2006)

Most commercial queen breeders utilize II queens that have been selected for specific traits, at some point in their production cycle. 

Queen breeders don't talk about breeding stock too much. If you ask a breeder and he/she isn't feeling like they are giving away secrets, they'll fill you in on where some of their foundation stock comes from.
Adam


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## Jerry J (Jan 12, 2004)

PEGGJAM, I talked to one Queen Breeder that selects for the Comb honey building trait which some hives do a lot better that others. He uses sections of queen excluder to keep drones in the hives that he does not wish to use, so they do not breed with his virgin queens of the comb honey hives. The drones are released for breeding of the extracted honey hives and others. This only takes a few days in a isolated yard.
Jerry


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

It certainly is an interesting concept, one that I hadn't thought of. They make a queen/drone trap that mounts on the front of the hive, that one could use for this, I have some of those gagets laying around, never really figured out why anyone would want to use them, as it prevents the drones from leaving the hive. Maybe that was their purpose????


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

It's nothing I've ever come across in my reading Peggjam. I know that some time ago, people thought drones were bad (they ate honey) so they trapped them. I'd never heard of them being used to confine drones for breeding (or not breeding) purposes.

Anyone?


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## adamf (Jan 28, 2006)

There's an article about it in one of the bee journals. The Title is something like:
"After hours mating..."

In theory it sounds great. 

Adam


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

Still delving into DCAs and I found this article "Drone mother colonies- numbers and positioning". It seems relevant to this discussion:

http://www.bookshop.nsw.gov.au/statsdownload.jsp?publication=5054

George-


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## mwjohnson (Nov 19, 2004)

I am going to set up an outyard this year,or maybe 2,in hopes that I may be able to somewhat influence mating if and when I start to try raising some queens.
I was going to use a topo map too.I discovered the county tax map office,and got a huge custom made ariel(sp?)photographic print that shows the roads by name,driveways,softwood/hardwood stands,hayfields,cropland,houses,buildings,in a kind of duotone color print,for 25 bucks,that has the tax lot numbers,that I can then get the owners address from the county tax office webb site. Heck,I can see the 64 Ford 3 ton I've been keeping my supers in,can't quite see my hives 'cause of the trees,DARN!
I have it on the wall and drew a 2&4 mile radius on it and was more than a little surprised where that line took me.
DON'T trust the odo in your truck,some of the spots I've looked at in the 4 mile range wound up being 9-10 miles by road!
Seems kinda extragavant,but it looks great in my office,I stuck some pins in to mark neighbors hives,it's great!
Hey,I see a guy with a pink ballon,I think.  
Mark

[ February 12, 2006, 05:01 PM: Message edited by: mwjohnson ]


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## Robert Hawkins (May 27, 2005)

Ignore that man. Part of my moon phase and nude dancing planting strategy. It's aerial BTW. So some one tell me how the hive is affected by having all the drones trapped inside. Do you have to clean the entrance of dead drones every day?

Hawk


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## mwjohnson (Nov 19, 2004)

Thanks for setting me straight,Hawk.
I even tried editing that,but hey,what'da want from a guy who swings a hammer for a living?








Mark


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## George Fergusson (May 19, 2005)

Anyone ever play with the Terraserver?

http://terraserver.microsoft.com/

It's pretty awesome, a national aerial photo database online. I believe you can zoom in anywhere in the US to 1 meter per pixel. There's another site that has colorized photos, can't remember where I saw that.


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## Hayseed (Apr 25, 2004)

Yeah - it's a little out of date - I just zoomed in on my house - the old one I tore down 8 years ago is on the map.

Darn if i kin almust cee thee ole still bak in the holler.

Dale


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## adamf (Jan 28, 2006)

References for controlled matings by drone flight manipulation:


Sept 1992, ABJ, pgs.603-606, by Gerald M. Loper, Gordon D. Waller, Duana Steffens, and Robert M. Roselle

Sept 1992, ABJ, pg.607, by Leonard H. Hines
Aug 1990, ABJ, pgs.537-542, by Richard L. Hellmich II, & Gordon D. Waller

March 1993, ABJ, pgs. 207-211, by Richard L. Hellmich II, Jorge Ibarra, Manuel Mejia, Thomas E. Rinderer, & Nicholas A. Gutierrez

May 1991, ABJ, pgs. 328-332, by John A. Hogg


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