>I am trying to find out how those with top bar hives did, but have received
no response. They have been touted as not needing anything to survive, but
what I have seen in past winters is 0% survival. Be happy to be surprised.

I took 2 TBH's into the winter - one a Kenyan and the other a Tanzanian. Neither survived the winter. They were both southern packages and I think the southern queens may have been responsible. All my packages - several langs included - did not survive the winter. Only my northern bred Carni queens made it through the winter with 80% survival so far even with this terrible spring. I am not going to restock the TBH's. I also used the Essential Oil feed last spring and some during the summer when the drought was so bad. My mite counts in September [Medhat shaker method] were well below threshold in all my hives so I did not treat in the fall/winter. I saw no dead mites on the bottom boards from the dead-outs. All appeared to have started laying in late January during a warm spell and stayed on the brood and froze inches from honey. My Carni's didn't seem to have started laying during that period or were able to move to feed anyway. I become more convinced every day that we need queens that are bred for our climates almost no matter where we live [Millbury MA] 42°11'7.07"N 71°46'20.37"W.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm