How it's going:

Began the year with 2 survivor hives.  Brought in 8 packages in April,
started on PF-100s for the first 6 weeks, then given foundationless frames.
Packages were fed syrup for 3 weeks initially, survivors were not fed.
Split aggressively to a max of 18 colonies, with splits rearing their own
queens.

During the dearth, one package hive suffered severe EFB symptoms and was
combined with a stronger neighbor.  One package queen failed (too inbred,
workers ate most of her eggs) and was replaced. One hive had zero and
several had low stores as a result of rapid splitting. Two stongest hives
were fed syrup and capped stores distributed.  Weakest remaining hives
combined with each other for a current total of 15.

No colony has had 72-hour natural mite falls in excess of 12 mites.  Second
year colonies both had mite drops below 5 in 72 hours.  Small sample size as
most colonies are packages or splits from packages.  We'll see what next
spring looks like.

-Catherine
On Aug 25, 2011 7:47 PM, "allen" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I'm thinking that right about now we should start hearing about serious
bee losses form the treatment-free folks.
>
> How's it goin'?
>
> allen
>
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