I attend a field day of the Iowa Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association last Saturday. They brought in a speaker who tends hives locally. His talk was rather bleak and discouraging. He went on at length about the problems of bee keeping (foulbrood, mites, etc.). I have heard that the wild bee population is succumbing to these problems, thus making it very important to have domestic hives. Are things as bad as this person lead me to believe? Is it such a hassle to maintain a few colonies? I plan to do it anyway. Randy Nessler [log in to unmask]