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.
 
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 * Origin: Kent Beekeeper Beenet Point (240:244/116)