Do you have information to back up that treated hives produce twice as much honey as untreated hives? I have never come across that in my reading.
However, what difference does it make how much honey they produce if you lose just as many hives in the end anyway.
It stands to reason a healthy colony will be more productive. But It is not quite that simple. Climate, Current seasonal Highs and Lows, Local forage are factors that we cannot really account for will all play account. if you have a look on the website in the article I posted there is a ton of information about colony survival and it goes in region, state, treatments - it is a wonderful site go have a look - it may help to allay some of your questions
I would not say āyou have nothing to worry aboutā, but I have not treated for Varroa at all, nor anything else at all, for the last 13 years. In fact, other than Varroa I havenāt treated for anything whatsoever in 41 yearsā¦
It also does not help him if you use treatments which are not effective, nor improve his condition. Unless all you are worried about is working him hard enough to get what you want out of him before he diesā¦
Sell him a honey cure - 4 lb per day!!! 
I bet his answer will beā¦ too many!! 
I havenāt been to the outyards. The full size colonies in the home yard are 100% alive. The overwintered nucs are 70% alive but a lot of them were marginal even for nucs. They were all in one eight frame medium box. I would prefer them to be in two eight frame medium boxes.
I think your onto something there Adam, I remember watching a video on youtube of a bloke in the U.S. He said something like this: with all the challenges he faces with beekeeping & he listed them, varroa included. The one thing that troubles him is SHB. Sounded like he rated SHB as a much bigger challenge than varroa.
On another occasion a bloke on Youtube told me something similar, I think he was in Brazil or somewhere in S.A. Except his main challenge was cane toads. I simply told him to elevate his hives off the ground, problem solved.
A 30% loss, Iād be trying to bring that down to zero next season.
Thatās a pretty glass half empty way of looking at it Jeff 
Itās 30% of the nucs, not of all the hives.
Well thatās stating the obvious!
Hi Adam, Iām generally a glass half full type of bloke. However with the many years of experience, I would have thought that the losses would be close to zero by now. Iām thinking of all the boxes & frames that have to be dealt with in the clean up.
I think it would be better to have fewer nucs with larger colonies & achieve a near 0% loss than to have more nucs with smaller colonies & have a larger % of losses, then have the boxes & frames to clean up during Spring.
Shame you canāt tell the Varroa that!!
When I lose nucs it is usually to the bitter cold. Luckily this winter it didnāt get more than -7 F.(-22 C) briefly a couple of times but most winters we get a couple of weeks of -10 F (-23 C) and occasionally a couple of weeks of -27 F (-33 C). I think the record in this location is -35 F (-37 C). Itās worth wintering nucs even though you usually lose some because itās that many more queens and colonies I have in the spring. Iād love to figure out how to winter 100% of the nucs 100% of the time. I will continue to work towards that. Here are the national averages:
https://beeinformed.org/results/colony-loss-2014-2015-preliminary-results/
My nucs did better than the losses most people had for full colonies.
Itās easy for me to talk, keeping bees in the sub-tropics. However, how would you go with the nucs all nice & snug in a type of shed, all wrapped up in poly styo, thermal insulation, whatever you can get your hands on? The cost the first year might be high, but youāll have that thermal insulation to use in future years.
I didnāt read where you blamed the losses on varroa. I did read where you havenāt treated for varroa for 13 years. Could varroa possibly be the cause of your losses?
I always look for signs of Varroa. I was losing a lot to Varroa between about 1997 and 2001. Not losing them to Varroa anymore. And if I was it would be the strong hives that Varroa kill when they kill. Insulating hives is not as foolproof or easy as one might think. Here are some schemes Iāve used:
(note the styrofoam wrapped box in the background) Severe moisture issues.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnucs.htm#overwinternucs
Several pictures here. The ones with the feeder jars also had severe moisture issues. Wrapping seems to be counter productive.
