> but I would suggest that almost all feral colonies are not really truly unmanaged as they are swarms that have escaped from managed
colonies



>The fact that we owe our knowledge about forest dwelling temperate honey bees almost exclusively to a feral population outside its natural range, from the deciduous forests of New York State (Seeley, 1985), points to the second problem: there are actually no scientific data available about the ecology of feral honey bee colonies in Europe, neither before nor after the arrival of the Varroa mite (Geldmann & González-Varo, 2018). It is often quoted that feral honey bee colonies have always been rare (Ruttner, 1973), but there is no information about their actual abundance and distribution at earlier times. Further, the density of honey bee colonies in temperate woodlands might naturally be very low and nests are extremely cryptic (Seeley & Morse, 1976; Visscher & Seeley, 1989): discovering a honey bee nest by chance and without using specific searching techniques is hence very unlikely

> Kohl PL, Rutschmann B. 2018. The neglected bee trees: European beech forests as a home for feral honey bee colonies.  

https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4602

A few years back, one of our state entomologists got a sizable federal grant to research bees, intending to raise a local queen. As part of the grant, efforts to find a feral colony for breeding stock were undertaken.  Our state has vast forested areas, and a strategic search using local bee-tree lore and numerous swarm traps produced nothing. Our densest forests seem void of feral bee colonies, but apparently, there are areas where things are different.  This study tells a different story. 

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