Many thanks for that description of what happened to some of yo
Hi Dee

Many thanks for that description of what happened to some of your yards last year.  Jerry too.  It is a real eye-opener to hear these first-hand reports of problems from quite a different corner of the globe.  I had a description from a beekeeper not very far away in the NE of Scotland of one (just one!) hive last November in an apiary of ten emptying of its bees in a strange way, leaving behind brood and eggs.  To see those problems on the scale you experienced must be really worrying.

Can I ask you more about it?  There are a few questions that might help us all learn.

1) You said that you were showing beekeepers the hives just a month before.  Could they have brought in a pathogen?  Did they handle combs?  Were they just in the yards affected?

2) Are there migratory beekeepers with yards anywhere near those that collapsed?

3) What about pesticides?  Could the bees in those yards have reached places where folk might be using pesticides such as crop growing or even golf courses or suburban trees or gardens?

From what you've said so far, it looks like something sudden and in a restricted area.  A new disease would fit the bill, and the usual 'combination of factors' which folk usually blame just seems unlikely to be so restricted like this.  Did anyone test the survivors for disease?

Sincerely hope that your other yards remain free.

best wishes

Gavin




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