Only in small areas.
The requirements (imho) for any meaningful feral bee study must 
include isolation from managed colonies. That limits the useful 
test areas (in all cases I can imagine) to places offlimits to 
beekeepers. I had pretty good luck in SW Arizona by utilizing the 
Kofa National Wildlife Reserve, and large Air Force and Marine 
firing ranges (5-7 million acres), both before and after the AHB 
swept through. Others (Loper, Sheppard, Schmidt, ?) did the same.
My jars of alcohol-preserved bee samples, unfortunately, were 
dumped by the Tucson USDA lab after my retirement in 2001, but 
that is the usual approach to government research materials, even 
if irreplacable. I have copies of many morphometric analyses, but 
they are prob of little use with CCD studies.
Mite studies of jarred samples could yield results years into the 
future, if labs and beekeepers would regularly save a few samples. 
It would not take much room or expertise, and might help answer 
questions in the future.
Think ahead.
  - John Edwards, former USDA killer bee tracker and identifier,
now in Vancouver, WA

On Thu Jul 26 11:00:01 PDT 2007, Kathy Kellison 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>   Are there any sustained, systematic, studies of feral hives in 
> the U.S?

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