>Have you considered the possibility that the bees you sold were loaded with
mites?  Or maybe the comb was old and black and carried some other problem
in addition to the mites?

Sorry Jeff, missed your post until Allen responded. Bees were very low on mites [alcohol shake] all frames were less than one year old, all queens were new and all from mite resistant stock. they were thoroughly inspected by the state bee inspector before being dispensed. One nuc inspected had some chalk and I took it out of the sale pool. I have around 50 from that group I'm taking through the winter. Summer losses were very low =maybe 5 that went queenless or had to be combined with other nucs. All these nucs performed very well through the summer and almost all of the nucs I sold made honey. I base my conclusion on the fact that I had to treat this August because I had unacceptable mite counts [although my idea of high mite counts is pretty low - over 6 mites in a shake and I treat.]

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