> 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.

Did you not have more snow than usual as well?  That helps the hives
survive cold temps.  Here a little north of you in Prince Edward
Island we had also record cold, but also snowfall.  In fact we made a
new record for winter snowfall, 18 feet or 5.5 meters.  As I look out
my window this morning on the fifteenth of May I still see the
remnants of "glaciated" snowdrifts in several shady places.  But the
bees survived the cold with about normal losses, even though they were
buried deep in snow for long periods (not an easy job to reach
thousands of hives on snowshoe and dig down to them).  The snow was
very crusty by the time many were reached, but the air volume of the
caves they melted seemed to have saved them.   We are feeding more
than normal, but thankfully we can drive in to many yards now and are
no longer feeding from sleds.

I think a phone survey is not that accurate as people are pointing
out, but likely it is does reflect losses over 30% which is still what
Marla Spivak correctly termed unsustainable in the talk recently
discussed.  Do your state apiarists not gather statistics as they do
here in Canada?   The provincial statistics here have not been good in
general, in the past years.  The factors Marla pointed to are real.

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