I'm in complete agreement, Pete.  Long before varroa, I always planned for
taking only 2/3rds of my August number of hives to almonds in February,
mainly due to combining weak colonies in fall (a practice that I've changed
in recent years).

With the advent of serious money in almond pollination, many try to winter
every box that has bees flying.

The other thing is how one qualifies a "loss."  In almonds, it's pretty
much any hive that doesn't grade at at least 4 (or 6) frames on Feb 20.
 But in our Calif climate, that doesn' necessarily mean that the colony
died, or was unable to later build to produce a honey crop.

As an example, in a trial that I ran over this winter, starting with 162
5-frame nucs in August, 160 went into winter alive.  We experienced a
highly unusual mild winter.  Some (mainly those that were not fed
supplemental protein) dwindled to as little as 1/4 frame of bees.  Yet as
of today, 160 of the 160 are still queenright, building, and expected to
grow to full-sized colonies.


>"Bee-Keeping", by definition, would be the attempt to not kill bees.
> Workers are a fungible commodity, for the most part, so there is never a
> reason for workers to die.


This is a message that I continually preach to those trying to select for
survivor stock.  You are breeding mainly for traits passes by the queens
and drones, not necessarily by the workers.  Workers, being fungible, do
not need to die in the process.  I.e., the Bond method does not need to be
taken to the death of the entire colony--you can intervene to save the
workers; just eliminate the queen.


-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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