From: Micky Lee <mlee4321@juno.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 17:12:12 -0600
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Fw: Are Feral Honeybees Recovering? Call for observation.

I'm new here, and I would like to put my "two cents" in on this one. So
by way of introduction, I have been keeping 10 to 15 hives, near St.
Louis, MO, for several years and was the second in our area to find varoa
mites in my hives. I am active in our local bee club and I moderate the
egroup Missouriapiariast.

Even before the mites arrived here, studies had shown that; in nature,
colonies which were smaller because of limited space, had mites but do
not succumb to the them. Several feral colonies that were known to be
more than five years old have been transferred to hives with space
sufficient to produce surplus for the beekeeper died within two years.

Beekeepers do lose swarms. The last few years, in our area, the weather
has been such that we beekeepers have lost a lot of swarms. We and our
gardener friends have noticed there are now bees in areas where they were
gone and no bees are kept. We are also beginning to get swarm calls
again.

We believe that while we now have a feral population most individual
colonies will die within three years and some will survive in the wild
state. We hope eventually from this population survival traits will be
selected for and a resistant strain will appear. This is however a slow
process.

Micky Lee

On Mon, 5 Mar 2001 07:46:52 -0800 "huestis" <buzzybee@capital.net>
writes:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David L. Green <Pollinator@AOL.COM>
> Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 6:06 AM
> Subject: Are Feral Honeybees Recovering? Call for observation.
>
>
> > I believe I know almost all the beekeepers in this immediate
> area,
> and
> > where the bees are kept, though perhaps a hive or two might slip
> by my
> "net."