n On Mon, 13 Jan 1997, David Eyre wrote:
 
> The message from Andy regarding the California flooding was received
> with shock and horror. This has to be a disaster of mammoth proportions.
> To recover the equipment alone will takes weeks. The cost to others
> around may be incalculable. I would suggest it will be enough to put
> some out of business!
>         Is there anything we can do as a group to help alleviate the
> problem?
 
>
> *********************************************************
        HI , We had the same type of problem in California 2 years ago.
After Andy did his post , I called down to where  I'm getting my bees in
the spring.My source is ok but there were some around Yuba City that did
get cleaned out pretty bad.There was ten miles along the river that did
get wipped out.
 Last night I talked to a lady that gathers information for the US
government on honey production and numbers of hives.The numbers are still
coming in , but that 10 mile strech took out 16,000 hives.We are better
off with the problem now then in 2-3 weeks from now.All the bees are not
in the area for Almounds.I don't like to see us loose any hives, but it
could have been much worse. I can't remember the total number that are
trucked into California for pollenation , the # is way over 50,000
hives.We do not need a lose of one more hive , with the other problems
that we have.The winter loss in the USA will be more than expected. We had
a bad winter loss last year in some parts of the country.That did not get
everyones attention and the numbers will show that we did not turn the
corner on Varroa + its little pathogens that come along for the ride.
 We all need to help get more people back into beekeeping. It can help
soften the fall.Too many eggs in one basket is not smart business.We
better take a very good look at what we are doing in agriculture and see
if it works with or against nature. If its against nature , we loose.
 David , we will come out of this flooding loss , but I hope we come out a
little smarter and take a better look at the big picture.Progress should
be made off of our mistakes.We study nature at these little finite points
and we have so much space between them , that the picture is not clear or
true in some cases. Its like the Atom, a very few particles and a lot of
space.We find this space to be very important. We as man know very little
about the bee.We have millions of pages of research and we know the
observed behavior for one point at a time with the rest space that we are
trying to fill in.That is the reason I value our researchers so much.It is
very important to learn as much as we can about the Honey Bee.We are part
of its world.The view is different when we come down off of the mountain
that we have made for ourselves.
 Best Regards
 Roy