Not many commercial beekeepers keep meticulous records, myself included.
But my memory is that before varroa, I used to set up yards of 72 hives
(one truckload) each season. At the end of the season perhaps one or two
would have died from going queenless. The rate is higher now, but can't
say by how much, since we now run the operation very differently, with all
kinds of different numbers of colonies in our 60+ locations.
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
530 277 4450
ScientificBeekeeping.com
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