Sorry DeWayne.  I guess you didn't get the joke.  Many did; many did not.
It was subtle.  Here's my confession:

What happened was, one day I selected and copied a bit of what I considered
to be a bit of amusing hyperbole in one of Bob's posts and pasted it into
the subject line of an article I posted to the BEE-L mailing list.  I wasn't
saying that there weren't beekeepers experiencing bad losses, but I was
gently teasing Bob about what some of us consider his tendancy to
exaggerate, jump to conclusions, and sensationalize things.  (We do love and
appreciate him and his generous contributions, but sometimes we like to
tease him a bit and he pretends not to notice).

Some of the regulars got the joke and we kept the subject line going, but,
anyone who reads the articles will see that the matters discussed quickly
changed to other things, and that the few posts that actually addressed the
subject were queries as to where the losses were, seeing as the writers were
not observing anything abnormal.  And no, there was no roar, unless you want
to count the chuckles.

There has been quite a spate of articles in the press lately about the huge
losses, and our industry has milked them for all they are worth.  There are
huge problems in beekeeping in the USA, and Canada, but, as I have said,
they are mostly economic.  We get no sympathy there, but when there is a
nasty villain, like a blood-sucking mite, to blame for our woes, then we get
lots of understanding and concern from the public and from government, so
nobody really makes a big issue if the writers in the popular press want to
think that the mite is the big problem.

As for the facts, maybe, just maybe, the losses are out of line this year,
and maybe they are not.  I am sure there are some spots where the losses are
heavy; there always are.  That's how random distributution works.  Anyhow,
it just happens that the average *normal* attrition over an entire year for
commercial beekeepers is at least 30% of colonies, and, in some areas
numbers as high as 50% has been discussed as normal.  That was true before
mites, and it is true now.  Beekeepers just have to split, requeen, catch
swarms, and buy replacements to keep numbers up.  That's just the way it is
and has been in the past.

So, 50% losses are not particularly abnormal, although they seem large to a
non-beekeeper, and an occasional 100% loss is routine.  A 50% or 100% loss
of cattle annually, for example, would be a shocker, but for a beekeeper, it
is just business as usual.  Those who have polluted their hives with
pesticides may be an exception, but I have talked to plenty of beekeepers
who were smart enough to avoid that trap.

I think I explained the rest in a previous post, but if you have any
questions, please ask.

As for BEE-L or its archives being a message board, well, I don't know what
it may appear to be from AOL, but out here on the Internet, BEE-L is and
always has been a LISTSERV mailing list, also known simply as a mailing list
or an email list.  "When e-mail is addressed to a LISTSERV mailing list, it
is automatically broadcast to everyone on the list. The result is similar to
a newsgroup or forum, except that the messages are transmitted as e-mail and
are therefore available only to individuals on the list. "

As with most email discussion lists, BEE-L has archives, which provide an
exception to the above statement in that they can be accessed by a somewhat
clunky and imperfect web interface.  Members can attempt to post messages by
the web interface, but may experience problems.

FWIW.

allen
A Beekeeper's Diary: http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/

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