It is already in the news stating that 40% of bees died across s the US and
losses were even in the summer.

Problem with both numbers- first it is 40% of all beekeepers including
hobby (and hobby beekeepers really bias the data) and this year was an
exceptionally cold one in many parts of the country. Here in Maine we had a
lot of starvation deaths, mine included. It was 14F below average for
February and 7F below average in March. As was noted many times, if you
track their data over time, there is a one to one correlation with bee
death and severity of winter.

The other "surprise" was the number of colony losses in the summer. But
they never asked that question before so the real point is they should have
been asking it all along, then there would not be a surprise. I took the
survey and one of my hives will be a "summer" loss this year even though it
was a winter loss, only because of the cut-off dates. So even that number
is questionable.

Usually they send a link to those who participated but I have not seen an
email yet. So I am going by past reports and they may have modified this
one to include better data breakdown.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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