Randy writes:
colony health today is challenged by the varroa/virus
complex, Nosema ceranae, inbreeding, and loss of forage.  It is more
difficult to keep colonies healthy these days.

I am not sure that can be called new. Loss of forage is not new, Harbison left the Sacramento valley and went to San Diego for this very reason. Viruses are not new, Bailey identified all the major types and declared them present in most colonies; they don't cause mortality at low levels. Nosema ceranae may have been here unnoticed for decades, as Traver and Fell report. Varroa is not new, by any stroke of the imagination. 

What is new is the intense scrutiny that the beekeeping industry has been subjected to in the last decade. Obviously, this is not a bad thing; more information and knowledge is always a plus. But it comes with a cost: people tend to think the more bad things that are found, the worse everything is. 

The thing that is certain is that everything changes. Whether it changes for the better or the worse depends entirely on what you compare it to. Whether we get better a coping with difficulty or not depends on whether we are capable of making the appropriate adjustments to changed conditions. Canada and Europe are reporting a decrease in losses, as a direct result of better management techniques. 

PLB

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