As Mike says:
> "How do you select for bees that will make their winter stores when there's no flow?"

Honestly, I have never heard so much nonsense as of late. Once you become a beekeeper and start meddling with their affairs, you are *responsible* for them. If the weather is crap, and there is no flow, it's not the bees fault if they all die but a few and those remaining aren't going to be blessed with some sort of mojo magic that you can breed and sell. 

The idea that things will take care of themselves if we get out of the way is a bunch of hooey. The human race has meddled with every corner of the globe and we are now charge with the preservation of its parts, if that indeed is still possible. Hence, we are responsible for honey bees and all the other pollinators. By choosing not to look, these problems don't go away.

Only in a wild jungle setting is there anything like natural selection still going on. There is nothing natural about honey bees in America, almonds in California, or giant cranberry bogs. The way to keep bees in the 21st century is not to be more ruthless, but to be more intelligent. This is the Informed Discussion Bee List; not the Ill Conceived & Unfounded Conjecture Consortium.

PLB

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