> question for you Bob, in view of Randy's observation that most commercial
outfits he knows have low rates of colony loss,as do you.

 *most*?

Define most?

The Adee Honey Farm base is in California on an 8000 acre ranch and I am told most of the year the hives are in California as are the Hives of Brown's bees.

Both operations have California addresses.
 

If the operation spends over half the year in California are the beekeepers California beekeepers? The answer based on past beekeeping ways would be yes.

>But beekeepers in your immediate circle have 50% or 75% losses.
 
Not in my immediate circle. All the commercial beekeepers in my area have went out of business. I am the last beekeeper standing.



I was was in Florida at the operation of retired an sideline beekeeper Horace Bell recently and spoke with California commercial beekeepers hauling loads to California and learned first hand of huge losses in California with California beekeepers and told of desperate attempts to buy hives by Adee and others to cover  pollination contracts

Jeff Pettis (head of Beltsville ) says losses are over 50%.

My sources are very good!  The California package bee industry have NEVER admitted to losses. No CCD! No small hive beetle in their package bees.

Would you buy queens and package bees from an operation in trouble? Hmmm.


> If
beekeepers I know had those kinds of losses, I would question what they are
doing different than me, because something is different

Maybe its because I avoid the dreaded corn plant? Eh. 

"corn kelt ma bees"  (chuckle)

>I learned long ago on the blueberry barrens, looking at commercial
pollinators bees, that there can be a lot of mismanagement even with
beekeepers who depend on bees as a living.

Commercial beekeeping is about percentages. What we call percentage novice beekeepers call mismanagement. I have taught percentage methods.

>Also made me
wonder how they stayed in business.

Mark Winston wrote he did not think he could have made a living in the commercial beekeeping industry. When asked he explained to a fellow commercial beekeeper the reason was the percentage method. You can't spend hours on a single hive. 

>o it is a tragedy that some beekeepers you know have 50% or 75% losses
this year. But if you all are in the same area,why are you successful in
keeping losses down while they are not? I think we both know the answer.

Bill the commercial beekeepers are in California (Adee and others) and in the northeast (Doan & others)

I really do not know what losses Randy and the hobby beekeepers are seeing. His following is the hobby and sideliners. Could be their losses are low this
winter but not typical for the winter of 12/13 in the 
the U.S. according to the USDA-ARs and officers of the national organizations. 

The losses are real! reason needs found. the problem is too big for the USDA to handle? Virus is a good scapegoat.

bob

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