When tracheal and varroa mites hit, ferals pretty much disappeared and swarm calls dropped to zero. About a decade later the swarms started again, and a couple of years later the calls began for removals.

Joe made a key point about factors in feral recovery.

> It seems that a healthy feral population or good out-mating
> combined with low mite pressure in the local population may
> have much to do with succeeding without the use of treatments.

The climate and environment help colony survival, but the factor I suspect contributes most to the health of feral colonies is that they are not disturbed. The protocol I've been following has avoided apiary wipeouts: bees are only disturbed once a year.

Each colony is opened in spring, honeycombs are harvested, and a new frame is inserted between each pair of brood frames. There is no foundation, but the bees draw straight comb from a starter strip because they are between fully drawn frames. This gives the queen fresh comb to lay in, and after the old brood comb is harvested as honey comb it goes into the melter.

Colonies are on their own after spring. Fresh comb for the queen seems to reduce the likelihood of colonies to swarm. The 10-12 colonies are kept in Langs or 3'-4' long horizontal hives and the horizontals do a little better than the Langs.

Typical winter losses are zero to 2. The typical summer losses of 2-4 are replaced with either swarms or cutouts.

The average survival rate is not very meaningful, colonies tend to last less than two years or longer than four. In recent years there have been a few 'Fail to Thrive' colonies that did not boom in spring and lingered the rest of the year before failing in late fall.

Do the colonies which live <2 years come from beekeepers and those which live longer come from ferals? No idea.

The control colonies have been two garbage cans swarms had set up house in, and were brought back to the yard. The first lasted 8 winters before failing, and the current can is about to enter its sixth winter.

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