> will rearrange a brood nest in a heartbeat to better winter. Time consuming > but I hate dealing with deadouts. Rearranging brood nests after August is a prescription for hive death here in Alberta. We have learned to leave them the way they are or lose the hives we have 'helped' while those we left 'unassisted' winter well. > One of the sites Allen listed to look at for winter information listed > around 25% winter losses with their methods. I consider 25% to be > unacceptable. These are the facts of life in areas where the wintering season extends from the end of September to the beginning of May and bees cannot be worked extensively during that time without risk of harm. The writers cited are being honest. These are typical long term (+/- 5%) averages for commercial operators who count losses in May, count small hives in their losses, and don't pretend to save weak hives by stealing brood and bees from stronger colonies. Some years losses can be as low as 6%, but then again, other years can bring losses of up to 50%. It is possible to reduce losses by extensive beekeeping late in the previous season, but the economics of trying to save a questionable hive are poor. The cost of such intervention is high, time is very short, and the success uncertain. Wintering begins in spring, and, by late summer, hives that have not made the grade might just as well make it on their own, or die. One of the less obvious reasons is this: 'Good' beekeepers change the majority of queens each year. When changing queens we buy queens from suppliers whose stock has done well before, BUT, each year, of necessity, the suppliers use different breeder queens and raise thousands upon thousands of queens from each. As a result, the stock may have changed and the bees sold in any one season may not winter as expected. Beekeepers using a large number of queens from one or two batches may thus suffer huge unexpected losses. This effect is less obvious in areas where winters are short, since most of the losses are hives that dwindle near the end of the confined period, and if that period is shorter, the losses are correspondingly less. I have written extensively about this and other factors before. Some of the material is in the logs and some is on my site at http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/ > I have had those levels before (not often) and place the > blame on myself and not mites or cold winters. I've been to Missouri in Feb and March and thought it quite balmy. Mention has been made of the influence of latitude on wintering. In my experience, the two important factors (for beekeepers) that are directly dependant on latitude are the *length* of winter and the length of days during summer. Other factors, such as temperature and weather are less directly related. Winter is _at least two months shorter_ in Toronto than in Calgary. I trust that winters are even shorter in most of the US. allen