On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:40 PM, James Fischer <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
> How much experience with bees have you had prior to this venture?



>  4 years working with local ferals



> . The lack of a response to my repeated
> questions about insurance forces me to conclude that you carry no coverage,


You have asked me this question exactly one time. Why do you find it
necessary to resort to hyperbolic exaggeration?
I have good coverage from a company that fills the niche I occupy just
fine. Thank you for your concern, but I do have coverage, and I don't find
it necessary to publish the company's name.

>
> > AHB traits are not in evidence except in a tiny fraction of the
> population.
> > Those bees are removed from circulation and the queens replaced.
>
> But this is based upon very informal and subjective criteria that proved to
> be inadequate to protect the public in Florida.  There are many who have
> hoped to profit from the increased interest in beekeeping among people who
> hitherto would have been only gardeners, but few of them have been so bold
> as to openly advertise that they are collecting swarms in an AHB area
> without 100% unconditional requeening.
>

SoCal is not Florida, and your intimation that I am "hoping to profit" in
some kind of sleazy way would be funny if it weren't so ignorant of what it
is I do. Firstly I am cautious in the extreme regarding protecting the
public when do removal, string yellow caution tape a placing signs where
appropriate. I also know how to say "No, this won't work, there are too
many dangers to the public". Cutting through stucco with an angle grinder,
reciprocating saws, drill-drivers and crowbars, rubber-banding comb into
frames and watching over the removed hives, its a grueling business. I
approach it as a craft, which is how I have lived my live, and I'm not
apologizing for it.

I know you  don't know me, but I will say it again, I do not see a
preponderance of hot hives. I see them  very rarely.

> If your experience is as you state, what has happened to the 150 colonies
> collected if only 20 hives are your own, and 20 are at the homes of your
> clients?  Have you sold or given away the other colonies/swarms to people
> you do not mentor?  If all these colonies can be checked for their
> long-term
> docility, this would be an unexpected contradiction to the data and
> consensus of any entire industry, so they would be well worth surveying.
>

Thank you, yes that is exactly what I am trying to say here. I am eager to
produce a data set for all these colonies checked for their long term
docility; I have also had people tell me that they didn't believe any
cutout could ever survive, which I find to be untrue.

What happened to the other 150 hives? First of all, I NEVER sell to a
non-beekeeper, unless they sign a contract that they will pay me to tend
their bees on an annual basis. However, I have seen commercial guys who do
nuc- and queen- rearing snag uneducated people who want bees for their
gardens, and they DO drop those bees of without so much as a how-de-do.
Maybe they think it's okay because they're pure races of bees, but without
management those bees inevitably die out or abscond, and then I get the
call.

The first place all those hives and swarms went, is into combines with
other hives I had that were dwindling or simply to give them better chances
to thrive. I have given many away to my colleagues from the former club who
I felt were responsible at their beekeeping practice; I have sold a handful
to a commercial beekeeper out in the rural area towards the central valley
who is interested in raising some hybrids of his own. And no, I will not
post his name here.

>
> If you have adequate records, 150 colonies are a large enough sample size
> "for publication", even if all that is reported is "survey" data from the
> owners of these hives, self-reported gestalt evaluations of colony
> temperament.
>

What would you consider to be "adequate" records?

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