>I often wonder about the sequence and description of events around the collapse of the ferals in the UK. Locally, varroa arrived in 1997. In the next couple of years we noticed that swarms, once abundant, had reduced dramatically in number and those that we did get were much smaller. Membership of our Association dropped from 112 in 1997, reaching a low of 44 before starting to recover when all the media hype started. We are now back to 85. Some of the newer or smaller or less-interested beekeepers gave up, but the stalwarts generally managed to keep up numbers, probably because they were looking after their colonies better and were able to replace losses. This improved husbandry also included better swarm control; with bees becoming more valuable we became more interested in not losing any swarms - and this no doubt had an effect on feral colonies which were succumbing to varroa and not then being replaced from 'domesticated' stock. This situation still applies: my swarm control is as rigorous as I can make it - and at the same time I, and our local Bee Improvement Group, are breeding for less swarmy bees. Best wishes Peter 52º11'39.10"N 1º40'26"W P.S. I have changed these co-ordinates slightly - Google Earth seems a bit woolly to say the least - the numbers it gave when I placed the cursor on the centre of my roof gave a house 15 doors away when re-entered. Google maps enabled me to keep changing the co-ordinates until I got back to where we live. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm