a Mr Borst snip...

It's long been known that there are many styles of keeping bees ranging from very intensive, where one tries to make every hive a winner, to extensive where one tries to keep as many colonies as possible, and not focus too much on the average yield or survival rate. Just different ways to get to the same goal: making a profit with bees. 

There are also other goals, which have nothing to do with cost/benefit ratios. Depends what you are after

my comments...
I tag all of this as PURPOSE.  Thankfully not everyone's purpose is making a buck or maximizing some production function.  There are (sometimes) more important things in the world.

If you read the very old bee books one constant that jumps out at you is that the advice to 'keep young queens' in your hives is one bit of advice that stands over decades if not centuries.  By and large it is not something that difficult to do if you have time or the labor input no matter what your scale of production.  I SUSPECT this strategy would resolve more problems than simply improving winter numbers. 

Sadly for folks like myself you raises treatment free bees this sage advice run counter to our ultimate goal.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html