CHRS: IBMPC 2 CODEPAGE: 437 MSGID: 240:244/116 57105842 REPLY: 240:44/0 61fe4cb9 PID: FDAPX/w 1.12a UnReg(561) I have removed many feral colonies from buildings and a few from felled trees. I where possible have encouraged people to keep the feral colonies especially in unused flues and roofs. I have a mental memory of their locations over a large area of West Kent & East Sussex. With the onset of Varroa in 95/96 most all of the feral colonies have died out. I also collect a lot of swarms, most beekeepers hereabouts refuse, from about 93 the number of calls for swarms & casts went up threefold. Greater wax moth increased proportionately. Some of the last feral colonies I took out although to all intent appeared strong in numbers, this was an illusion, created at the entrance. When I opened up the buildings, there were no more than 5k bees, perhaps 1k with deformed wings and mites galore. Here abouts the majority of "feral bees" originate from swarms from treated hives. I can say in some instances I know who lost a swarm and in whose house or where it resides, I can further say that those early swarms from last year despite having enough honey for the winter have already perished or been robbed out. Every Spring I supply and fix up bait hives close to where I have removed bees from within a house in previous years. Without fail they will be visited by scout bees if not filled by a swarm. I am not so clever that I do not lose swarms myself, I know when they arrive in one of my bait hives however since the queens are marked & numbered and to date the furthest flown has been six miles! taking five days! Someone on the list wrote of memory of bees given their short duration of life! It is an area worthy of research, since the workers can not pass on genetic material, only the queen, how far does she fly to a drone congregation area? does she in fact survey the domain, I doubt this. I suspect very few feral colonies will be truly mite resistant but never the less they are all woth investigating, if they throw swarms regularly then there is the opportunity to really look at them in a hive environment. The most unusual case I know of is the swarm that arrived, hived itself, bred larvae up to pupation, created a few swarm cells and departed leaving very few bees, insufficient to incubate the pupae and presumably left all the mites trapped. There were mites in the cells. I never caught that swarm unfortunately. [log in to unmask] --- * Origin: Kent Beekeeper Beenet Point (240:244/116)