In the FWIW column I have a beekeeper who places hives on my property. His bees are shipped to California at the end of the season which is about October. They are returned in mid-May. He checks these hives about once a week and has them set up in an area where we placed wire mesh on the ground to keep out skunks and other stuff. His main concerns are pesticides used on corn if there is any in area, a couple of kinds of bugs, and cattle which we fence out of the area. He tells me the bees will not survive a South Dakota winter in most cases. These bees are not from captured swarms of wild bees but the kind you would get from ordering them from a commercial seller which I assume is why they winter them in a warm climate.
