>>They die. Wax moth cleans up the remains. Therefor it is hard to observe something that is not there. Habeas corpus.**** Well, Bill, it's not quite that simple. At a minimum, I'd like to observe them in the dying process in nature before they get wiped out. It should be possible at least every once in a while, right? Now you may argue that I only get called to thriving colonies because collapsing colonies are a lesser nuisance. A feral colony with AFB in August should still have a large enough workforce to be a nuisance to a homeowner though. >>I run into people who point out colonies that have existed for many years in trees. If they did, they would be the holy grail that we search for, but they never are. Are you saying a feral colony can't survive on its own for several years in this day and age? I don't think you can come up with the evidence, pro or con. I am only going by the observations of the homeowners. If an observant homeowner tells me he's observed bees, with pollen on their legs, coming into a hole in his house every April (about a month before the start of our swarming season) and through the rest of the season, it suggests to a continually occupied cavity. [Yes, there are some homeowners who are curious about nature and not afraid to approach a bee's entrance hole. I had one person say he did not mind having the bees but his roofer was scared to death of them and the repairs had to be done.] Of course, this is NOT the case with EVERY feral colony but it is a case with a lot of colonies. >>There may be studies on the stability of feral colonies in the wild, but it would be difficult to control the primary variable of beekeeper's colonies in the area that replenish the feral population. You'd just have to come up with a method of tracking the queen, and her supercedure descendants, in a feral colony for several years. The nature of natural cavities and comb do not make this easy. Sounds like a great research project to me. >>You could lose every feral colony every year but replenish it with "kept" bees every year so it would look like you had a stable feral population. You are assuming the local beekeepers are carrying strong colonies into the next spring and that they swarm. :) In my neck of the woods, the number of beekeepers has been decreasing disappointedly fast. >>The feral bees did die off, as our Pumpkin growers here in Maine found out. There is no question the feral population has shrunk in many areas of the country with the introduction of the mites. I don't know if they are springing back everywhere but I did get a record number of calls from Nassau County on Long Island last summer where beekeeping has been outlawed for decades. I know of 2 beekeepers in Nassau and both of them are 10-15 miles away from the area where I received most calls. Of course, there may be some beekeepers there under the radar. I don't know for sure. What I do know is that my purchased Italian and NWC colonies would succumb to varroa within a year to a point of being way understrength for the winter. Since I started raising queens from collected feral queens, they do much better. Perhaps I raise better queens but it's the stock that determines resistance to varroa. BTW, to me, a feral colony, is any colony NOT taken directly from a managed hive. They can be long-term established colonies or colonies started from recent beekeeper swarms. I don't have a way of distinguishing between the two - although the color of the collected colonies is often a shade different from what I've seen, it's not a reliable indicator - and, in fact, the origin does not matter to me. All I am looking for is stock that does well left to its own devices. Waldemar -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---