> When I collect the feral here (Long Island, NY), the majority 
> of colonies have bees of different colors indicating drones 
> of differing lineage.  Last year, I did collect 3 colonies 
> of incredibly uniformly colored bees possibly indicating a 
> contained/isolated population.

If you joined the Long Island Beekeepers Club, you'd have heard
that we saw the same thing everyone else saw when varroa at last
was introduced to Long Island - swarm calls went to zero for
quite some time, then make a comeback of sorts.

If you'd indicate where you collected your 3 colonies, I'd
be happy to tell you which member beekeepers are in range 
of that area.  We've had at least one new member every month 
for the past 3 years, so we are now a much larger organization
with beekeepers "blanketing" the entire island.  My guess
is that a new beekeeper made the typical rookie error of
not keeping ahead of his/her colonies, to create your
consistent swarms, something we hope to correct with our 
new and improved novice courses led by Rich Bloom.

That's one "positive" that can be in part attributable
to varroa  - the well-publicized problems of bees has
brought people out of the woodwork to take novice courses
and take up the hobby.  VA saw the same trend, and so 
has several other states.

*******************************************************
* Search the BEE-L archives at:                       *
* http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?S1=bee-l *
*******************************************************