>A consideration for the possibility that the colonies were 'lacking in resistant 
>traits' must be equally considered as the cause, if one were to blame 'failure 
>to treat' as the cause.

I don't know how carefully you read my posts, but one of the interesting things 
I mentioned is that I had indeed obtained a number of strains of bees with 
reputations for having resistant traits.  They died just the same as all the rest.

I obtained stock from several sources in hopes of improving my stock and suspect
that something came along with it.

What I am thinking is that there is some novel pathogen which is going around 
and kills entire yards when conditions are right.

I am suspecting that all those bragging about how clever they are and how they 
need not treat have just not encountered whatever it is that is killing bees or
not experienced the conditions which allow it to avalanche.  

What are the odds?  For a small operator, much less than for a large operator.
Although luck allows the small operator to feel smug, the large operator knows 
the cards are stacked against him due to greater numbers and more locations 
and has to be much more proactive.

Chance is a hard thing to understand and impossible to measure except over 
large numbers -- and even then we know that we are dealing with finite samples.

I have had entire yards die over winter before, but because I had many more 
yards to average over, the winter loss only averaged to 15% for the outfit.

Looking at just a few yards might suggest disaster, but when the final numbers 
are tallied, the picture may look very different.

This was one yard.

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