Hi Yoon,
You make good points re ferals. I'd like to add a caveat to one of them:
>Intergrated Pest Management (IPM)
maintains the Intensive Care Unit to sustain the sick and the sickly on
tubes and inside the bubble, prolonging the sickbed unduly, however
unwittingly, promoting a germ-bed that will kill others and the ferals.
In the business world of beekeeping, few beekeepers are willing to allow the
vast majority of their colonies to die in order to weed out the less fit.
IPM allows them to keep their colonies alive for the business year.
The point is then to kill off all queens of colonies that needed help the
previous year, and only breed from those who didn't (or needed little).
This way we get the best of both--an income, plus better bees each year.
Randy Oliver
******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm *
******************************************************