>I was wondering if any northern beekeepers are seeing resurgence in feral 
>population, combined with low levels of varroa in domestic colonies.

Not in Maine. We have had two of the toughest seasons in a long time and the 
feral colonies have suffered as well as the hived bees. There is a huge 
demand for bees here with the heavy losses and surge in beekeepers, not 
enough to go around. The ones who knew of bee trees had plans to get bees 
from them but none made it through the winter. Every one I know has had to 
feed and use pollen substitutes to keep their hives alive this spring.

Now I am experiencing, after high winter losses, queen failures. I went 
though 4 hives Friday that I keep at our bee supply shop and 3 of the 4 had 
lost the queen and one queen was there but a drone layer, they were all 
young queens. It has been a struggle to keep any hives going, winter losses, 
queen failures, now we are having rain and cold temps. all week during the 
dandelion bloom so the bees can't fly. After finding the queen problem in 
the yard at the shop I want to get to my other bee yards to ease my mind 
about those queens but rain and cold are back so I have to sit and wait.

I have been reading the posts about queen banking since I do bank. I have 
always transferred them to the pink plastic JZs BZs when banking them. The 
queens I just lost had not been banked so I can not blame last seasons 
banking.

Sorry not a informative post, more like complaining...

Karen
in wet cold Maine 

             ***********************************************
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