Bob said

"Many hypothesis exist about why bees are becoming harder to keep alive. Take
your pick!

The bottom line is many commercial beekeepers are seeing annual losses 
higherthan in a couple decades. 70-90% losses reported  already in several areas 
of the U.S." 

and this

"Few commercial beekeepers are avid readers."

In my small world I rarely hear of losses like that in this region with a good amount of medium sized stationary beekeepers. Then again most of these beekeepers keep up on the latest and greatest ideas and many are raising their own queens. The commercial echo chamber and their horror shows does not represent the rest of beekeeping which I would claim is thriving better then the commercial side .  As many of you know I maintain commercial beekeeping has become unsustainable.  The media and other posters like to extrapolate the problems in commercial land across the board and I reject that notion. 

I think we are seeing the emergence of a new breed of beekeeper that is more self reliant and concerned with the health of their bees instead of cash flow. IMHO almonds are the life line and death spiral of the commercial industry whose business model is based on cheap fuel and squeezing more from their bees. 

For those who subscribe to Eric Mussens Newsletter, I would point to the latest issue that came out in the last few days - he has an interesting summary of almond pollination since about 2006. I quote from this article where he is referring initially here to this past winter:

" Looking back, it seems there must have been a large number of colonies in CA that dwindled to fairly small sizes over the winter. This is a natural occurrence for European temperate climate honey bees. The population decreases to an adequate size to survive winter with adequate bees to survive the winter with adequate bees to charge into spring brood rearing, but small enough to prevent consuming all the stored honey and pollen and dying of starvation.  It appears that the desire for a larger colony populations in Feb does not coincide with natures plan." 


Gee somehow a natural occurrence is now deemed an industry crisis..... 
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