Tens of thousands of hives crashing, roar of disbelief, super varroa --
with a rush to respond to the crisis.

I talked to a lot of beekeepers at the national meetings.  I learned, we
have resistant varroa, some of the big operators had a rough year, and the
almond acreage increased.

Allen said today: "So, 50% losses are not particularly abnormal, although
they seem large to a
non-beekeeper, and an occasional 100% loss is routine."

I did not hear from any beekeeper or researcher convincing arguments for a
varroa induced crash.

One of the high loss beekeepers cited 5 mites per hive drop -- but he was
sure that varroa was the culprit because after he 'treated', the hives
began to recover.   Maybe the recovery was coincidental with the treatment
-- I find 5 mites per hive hard to rationalize as the cause of the problem.

I've been chatting a lot of folks.  No doubt, it was a rough year.  But so
far,  the only 'hard' evidence that I can find are inspection reports of a
couple of situations.  I trust the folks doing the inspections.  They
reported that the 'decimated' hives started their decline months before and
many went into the winter in poor shape -- substandard stores and weak
populations.

I can't even get a number on how many of the commercial beekeepers were
reporting heavy losses -- it all seems to be indirect information based on
a shortage of bees for almonds -- which in part is due to increased acreage
plus what appears to be a more or less 'higher' than usual loss of
colonies.  Given the numbers of colonies needed, that increased loss spread
across all most of the beekeepers doesn't have to be a large increase.

So, what we need is some hard data.  I'm working on a reporting system for
bee losses, whether mites, pesticides, bears.  Lots of reasons to get this
documented.  Stay tuned, we will be launching a site for this in the near
future.

Jerry

(We're beta testing it now)

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