Mike said:

> We tend to group colonies, in apiaries , in much higher denisties 
> than in the wild-- thats worked for hundreds of years, and 
> management--not just chemicals  has made this possible.

Much longer than hundreds of years - thousands.
I'd call 75-100 hives in one yard a "high-density apiary".
Better yet, it was even an "urban" apiary, right in town.

http://www.rehov.org/bee.htm

http://tinyurl.com/6oftdo
or
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/03/AR2008090303
624.html

I think it should be clear that in the 10th Century BCE, any
"management" could only be described as "rudimentary" at best.

It certainly is true that invasive exotic pests and disease 
pathogens can rip through a larger yard, but this is a very
very recent phenomena, unprecedented in the history of beekeeping,
a direct result of faster and more ubiquitous international 
trade and freight.

The closer we look, the more evidence we have that the 
history of beekeeping is longer than history itself.

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