If you have several thousand hives, you are not going to "know" them, because it will probably not be the same worker looking at them on different visits. But if they are below average there will be a notation on the beehive of the problem, and if they are above average there will be a notation because they may be wanted for queen rearing. What you are going to keep track of is not individual hives, but yards. Why the fact that you do not "know" each hive matters, I do not understand. Because you or your workers are working with *some* hive every day that is fit (and sometimes on days that are not fit) you probably have a pretty good overview and can deal with the needs of the various yards. I have one milk cow and she likely doesn't do better than cows in a dairy herd. She is a pet and so we don't cull her. That's ok but how does that impact on "cows" overall? Probably not at all, same as with bees. Stan *********************************************** 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