There is a difference between backyard beekeepers and the commercial
beekeepers treatment of bees.

I can afford to experiment and allow losses that would break an commercial
beekeeper, just to improve my stock. If I continued to have winter losses
of half of my hives during the time I was refining what I wanted from my
bees and was a commercial beekeeper, I would have gone broke. Forget
pollination contracts. Bees would have not measured up and I would not have
had enough hives.

Also, the hobby beekeeper does not have to worry about all the outside
pressures the commercial beekeeper has when pollinating. You bring your
5000 hives to Maine and pollinate blueberry fields with 55,000 other hives
and all their attendant problems, you will medicate much more than I ever
would.

When I was in the military, I was given shots for every disease on the
books when deploying outside the US. I never asked to forgo the shots and
let natural selection take its course.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME