"Can you speculate as to why your harvests these days are
so much less?  Do you suspect it is at the 'cost' of the colony fending off
the varroa/virus complex?"

I would rather not speculate as I am accused of bias due to the fact I did work in R&D for several years in the Ag Chem industry.  That and a science education make me evil to many.  I do know that it is still possible to occasionally have a hive produce locally like they used to produce.  To get production takes intense varroa management with formic acid and also a high tech queen like a Latshaw queen.  Such productive hives nearly always die over winter.  I hoped when I restarted bees a couple of years ago that perhaps feral genetics might be ok so started with four swarms all of which I believe came from feral hives and a fifth swarm from bees that have never been treated for anything.  These bees all swarm so aggressively, even with young queens, that I can not build the large populations needed for productivity.  Next spring I intend two experiments.  I am going to buy an II queen, probably Minnesota hygenic, and raise replacement queens for most or
 all of my stock. I realize it may take two or three years to see the benefit of such a queen as her daughters will mate with my mutts.  I am going to try an early spring treatment of half my hives with the predatory mite Stratiolaelaps scimitus unless I see something between now and spring that tells me this is dumb idea.  Both seem to me to be interesting experiments to try.

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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