It is already in the news stating that 40% of bees died across s the US and losses were even in the summer. Problem with both numbers- first it is 40% of all beekeepers including hobby (and hobby beekeepers really bias the data) and this year was an exceptionally cold one in many parts of the country. Here in Maine we had a lot of starvation deaths, mine included. It was 14F below average for February and 7F below average in March. As was noted many times, if you track their data over time, there is a one to one correlation with bee death and severity of winter. The other "surprise" was the number of colony losses in the summer. But they never asked that question before so the real point is they should have been asking it all along, then there would not be a surprise. I took the survey and one of my hives will be a "summer" loss this year even though it was a winter loss, only because of the cut-off dates. So even that number is questionable. Usually they send a link to those who participated but I have not seen an email yet. So I am going by past reports and they may have modified this one to include better data breakdown. Bill Truesdell Bath, Maine *********************************************** 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