A Randy Oliver snip....'
The common thread is that they learn and adapt'

ET replies...
I would suggest that no system is static and therefore when thing change you either adapt or quickly go extinct.  This I suspect is as true for the beekeeper as it is for the bees.

I try to maintain about 200 hives here for myself + another 50 or so at the Texas A&M Bee Lab.  My primary objective is to make a small honey crop which I sell via the local farmer's market + to produce enough bees to sell a few nucs and in some years a few queens.  My goals in terms of profit, honey or bee sales is fairly modest.  The landscape of my apiary sites are large and fairly remote cattle pastures and the bloom is either boom or bust.  In the better years I can take a small crop and feed little during the winter months but in the bust years maintaining hive number does require feeding.  Being only 2 hours from the Texas Gulf coast the atmosphere here is very very humid.  The winters are fairly mild but the summers can get very hot and dry.  I don't treat at all... never really have.  This also means (via lab results) that I have very low levels of anti varroa applied materials in my hives.  I don't much concern myself with any absolute measure of loss but try to measure any seasonal loss in the context of that season and then compose some strategy to regain numbers when the season is more favorable.          

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