Letters to the Editor
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buzz Kill
Fortunately this isn't a completely commonplace occurrence yet. I live only a few miles from Novella, in Canyon, up in the east bay hills and have had no problems with any of my 5 hives..... yet. There was no mention of the beekeeper medicating her hive for varroa or tracheal mites, or for foul brook of wax moths? Did this happen? Mites have been killing colonies for going on 20 years and the empty hive is an end result of that problem.
The early research I've read is that this is mostly happening to commercial beekeepers with their thousands of hives that move from orchard to orchard fertilizing heavily pesticided (can that be a verb?) crops. There is however, no conclusive evidence in any one direction as of yet.
This was a lovely article about the joy of a backyard hive but hardly instructive about this burgeoning problem.