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Back in the late 90’s we had severe colony death problems, mites were blamed. I lost all my bees. We still have no bees locally. There are acres of white clover at the near by state bark but no bees

I put up a notice at the volunteer fire department to call me if a swarm showed up. I always got calls and collected swarms but they could not be sustained.

One year I did not clean up the dead hive. Wax moths invaded and made the worst mess you can imagine. One day I saw bee going into the wreck. Then another and then another. I opened it up and a swarm had occupied the hive and cleaned up enough to get started. They were drawing wax on the empty frames on the plastic wax base!. I was (and still am) ashamed of allowing the mess to not be cleaned up. I then jumped in and cleaned it all up and put in new wax in the brood chamber and one super. They did well but did not survive the winter... they just perished.

I quit. I sold most of my stuff and gave one complete hive, smoker, veil, gloves etc to a 16 year old boy that was busting at the seam to have some bees

The question always was...... do I have bees or do bees have me?

Sad to hear it. Hive mortality has been bad but I think folks have taken the tack that it is what it is and just split hives like crazy. If you’re gonna lose a third, double your hives and you’ll end up with what you had or a litttle better. Since I’ve not kept bees before varroa I have nothing to compare it to.

So far this year all my hives are alive or at least they were a week ago so its looking good. I think the bees are developing something of a tolerance for the mites and with the relatively soft treatments there is less reason to shy away from treating. We’ll see how it goes but I’m optimistic.....

....and then some other dread disease or pest will come in. Exploding brood? Self immolating drones?

One big change that I’m seeing evolve is the aversion to package bees. People are doing nucs.

Oh and we’re just the barely tolerated staff sent to serve the colony.