" don't forget to reduce that a bit more for feral hives which have always been there also.  not sure what number to assign them but they would be a factor. "

I thought about ferals and simply have no idea how to approach that topic.  Fifty years ago locally we had a decent population of ferals I think.  I am not sure we have very many at all today.  Guys that do cut outs tell me it is not very uncommon to find a marked queen in a cut out.  Hard to call those ferals.  I know guys that cut trees for a living and ask them about finding bee trees.  It very seldom happens.  Less than one a year.  Remember, those guys are cutting old trees that often have hollows in them.  I know two naturalists who work for parks and spend most of every summer in the woods about finding ferals.  They have never found one.  In general a colony in a tree only lasts one to two years and is then dead.  All in all I think it fair to say locally we have under one feral per square mile today.  A big drop happened in the late 70s due to an AFB epidemic.  Over a couple of years about half the registered hives in the county were burned.  I think pretty much all the ferals died of AFB.  I know if I get two miles from anyone with a hive and look at prime flowers to attract bees it gets real hard to find even one.  When I find a reasonable number and go looking for hives I generally find a yard within flying distance if I hunt hard enough.  There are bee-less places within two miles of my place.

On the flip side I have seen bees in places where I was pretty sure there were no domestics.  I saw a decent number of bees three or four years ago on the very top of the highest point in WVA.

In IA when I was a kid back in the late 40s and 50s I think it was close to zero ferals.  Most of the state simply has too few trees to support many ferals.  And many of those were American Elms which I do not think ever get hollows.

I will tell you that the OH hive count data put out by the state is meaningless.  We have a law that you are supposed to register every apiary site each year at a cost of $5 per site.  Most small bee keepers do not register and some larger ones with 20 or more hives do not register.  Yet, that is the data used to produce a hive count.  In the county I live in that count is likely at most 30% of the actual hives that exist.  When I talk to guys who were bee inspectors for the county in the past they agree with me that most hives are not registered.

Dick

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