"Splits from the survivors?"

And how many actually do this?  The last two years I have had a real fight trying to keep mite counts down.  My losses have been unacceptably high the last two years (30%).  Bad enough losses I did not even have bees to sell this year for the first time in quite a few years.   Now I will admit that due to an arthritic knee it was really hard to do a competent job with my bees those two years.  I solved the knee problem with  polyethylene and titanium last fall.  But, I have not solved the source of the mites.  The person who supplies mites to me refuses to test for mites and does maybe one treatment a year with MAQS.  Last year that treatment was in June.  They lost three out of three last winter so bought new bees this summer again as usual.  One casual walk by their hives tells me they bought wicked tempers.  So, now I have to deal with a bad drone pool for temper as well as a Darwinian mite source. 

The problem as I see it is in my climate if you do not keep those counts down you do not see a 30% loss, particularly on strong colonies.  On strong colonies it is at least 70% and often higher.  A lot of colonies I see die locally both in my own yard and in others yards are looking great Feb 1 and totally dead by April 1.  Just move to a shorter winter and half the local losses would go away.  The real strong ones will crash by Christmas.  But weaker ones in the fall ironically last longer.  Perhaps because they are not as effective at robbing in the fall?

In fact it seems to me that Darwin says in my climate you must constantly select for strength or you are breeding for weak colonies over time as those are the best survivors.  Splitting is such an inefficient way to increase bees due to the large amount of resources used if you split to keep counts up you are going to be splitting a lot of weak hives.  I think it is much better to learn to graft as it is so easy to do.  Then you can raise queens only from the very best and use weaker hives to supply the minimal resources needed to mate queens and grow them into nucs that will over winter.

Dick

HL Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. "

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