I attend a field day of the Iowa Fruit and Vegetable Growers
Association last Saturday.  They brought in a speaker who tends hives
locally.  His talk was rather bleak and discouraging.  He went on at
length about the problems of bee keeping (foulbrood, mites, etc.).  I
have heard that the wild bee population is succumbing to these
problems, thus making it very important to have domestic hives.  Are
things as bad as this person lead me to believe?  Is it such a hassle
to maintain a few colonies?  I plan to do it anyway.
 
Randy Nessler
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