"Nice to hear from you. I know that you were into the feral bee thing, and I encourage you to keep up some ongoing efforts in this area. But, I’m not sure that “no treatments” equates to “dead bees”. I see this equation made by beekeepers all the time. The problem is, that beekeepers tend to want to blame a single event for there problems, and beekeepers that have hives die in years they use no treatments have a convenient scape goat, partly because everybody makes assertions that bees will die without treatments. This gives false comfort and good cause for future failure by ignoring the real cause, which perhaps is bees lacking in resistant traits."
 
Joe, think you missed my point.  You can treat for everything or nothing, it's the pest you don't know about that will kill your hives, and it seems there is a new pest imported every few years.  You can't breed out of these problems, even bees with some nosema restantance have problems with nosema cereana.  
 
I also offer a jar of honey to any hunter who gets a bear in my area...
 
Jim http://www.northernqueens.com/
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