I'm not sure that you're getting my point here, either. I understand that the honey bee's promiscuity promotes disease. But that is the baseline. For example, we all breathe the same air, and it contains myriad industrial pollutants. You can't study human health in an environment other than that, so it becomes moot. It's the status quo.

I recently did an extensive search for info on honey bee colony density, and the two figures I gave were representative, but certainly not the extremes. Density can be far lower and far higher than those numbers. However, those were figures where colonies could thrive and sustain themselves, unlike the almond scenario you gave.

So, when an investigator tries to minimize drift in an experiment by painting hives, or turning them sideways, or wide spacing, they are just fooling themselves. The drift goes on anyway, hence my comment that if you really want to eliminate drift you have to reduce the colony density to a typical feral population. 

The calculated range for ferals is from less than one per mile2 in desert locations to more than 20 in tropical jungles. Commercial density is far higher, as we have stated, from a typical ideal of no more than 100 per mile2 in a productive honey region, to the ridiculous saturation rates necessitated by monocrop pollination needs.

The phenomenon of half the hives going to California and sitting cheek to jowl for a month could easily produce dire consequences to honey bee health. It's the equivalent of Muslims going to Mecca. If there were an outbreak of some terrible disease there, it soon would be everywhere when the pilgrims returned to their homes.

PLB

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