I love the way we wander around on this list. A thread on survival in Europe and now we are learning the chemistry of honeydew, mite management here in North America and various fall nectar sources and their suitability as winter feed as well as historic loss reports. It's great and I for one look forward to each days posts.

I second Bill's comments on MAQS. My experience and postings on the subject closely match his and I have found very much better success with Dri-loc pads. My only advise to those that say that they "treated" and that the subsequent loss is a mystery is that if you don't sample post treatment for efficacy then you don't really know if you did any good. If you did confirm that the mite level was low (>1%) during the crucial winter bee rearing season and still suffered high loss there is a mystery but at least you have eliminated the most probable cause. Treatment is not complete until efficacy is measured IMHO.

Unexplained losses are not new as Pete expertly reminds us. Even CCD I believe has been shown to not exactly correlate to mite infestation. Regional and wide spread losses have occurred throughout beekeeping history. They usually pass unsolved scientifically but opinions about their cause prevail. We need to be just as skeptical of historic explanations as we are of modern theory's and study them all from an unbiased scientific point of view.

As all beekeeping is local, all regional fall nectar sources are different. Here in the northern inter-mountain region our fall honey of thistle, rabbit brush, and mints make excellent wintering stores. I do very little fall feeding and the bees do great on it until spring sources come in. I also want to question the concerns expressed about cold and winter loss. My belief, confirmed over many years but most especially this past winter, is that a well provisioned colony can handle anything mother nature throws at it. True our cold is dry, but extreme. I abandoned winter wraps and top insulation and have never seen a colony die from what I would blame on cold. Honey is the best insulation. By well provisioned I mean 12 frames of capped honey in Oct. as well as ample stored pollen and a big population of healthy bees. 

Paul Hosticka
Dayton WA   

      

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