To me the issue is that a beekeeper with many thousands of hives loses a MAJORITY of them all at once. That What can you compare such an event to, other than a similar one that was historic? Based on the definition that Randy has for "master beekeeper", someone like Brett Adee shouldn't lose tens of thousands of hives in a short period of time. The article referenced that catastrophe and its timing. Not at all. When varro hit many lost their hives. HUGE numbers. Now we obviously have ELAP. Same effect hives are dead. Ask John Miller he spoke about this a bit last time we talked. He lost huge numbers. And he accepted the blame and found the solution, and climbed back up to a million pounds a year. Its real easy to make some mistakes. When it's the same players over and over... In my opinion, Hackenburgs are not as much beekeepers, but bee brokers. They make money in the pollination game on other peoples hives. Much more than on their own hives. Look at Denise Qualls, she's a broker. In the business but not her own hives. Same with a couple of others. When you drudge up old things, then I guess I can cite the great flood of the bible as the most severe problem facing bees. It wipes them all out. You can't go back and dredge up "factoids" from 8 years ago, like they happened yesterday. Not saying its not relevant, but its certainly not relevant when you have NO facts on Adee's problem. Its easy to lose 1000's of hives at a time. Real easy, always has been. Take to much honey cause ELAP covers you, forget to treat for mites, use treatments incorrectly, the list goes on..... Or maybe just spend time at the ABF conference whining about how bad life when you should be feeding bees. A little extra reading may be in order. I suggest "the little boy who cried wolf" and a chaser of chicken little..... Charles *********************************************** 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