Any casualties yet?

[Jon]

I have lost a couple of nucs already.
These were ones I had marked as probably too weak to survive when I did a check in mid October. They were about 2 frames of bees at that stage, nucs made up late August which never got a chance to build up in the relentless rain..
One of them had a little cluster of bees and the queen like one of Doris' fantasy football CCD colonies - so I tipped them into an apidea for the time being. The other was the one which I reported last weekend had a visit by a rat which had chewed through a couple of combs.
I really should have combined a few of these weaker nucs a while back but they all have new queens and I was reluctant to squash any.
I guess I should consider it as natural selection in action.
I reckon I will find a couple more casualties when I apply the oxalic shortly.
Some people might get a shock if they have not checked the bees since the late summer thymol treatment.
I see elsewhere Murray McG is predicting a bad winter and I would concur with that as clusters seem smaller than usual. Some are likely to dwindle to nothing and there will likely be a few queen failures as well.
last winter was brilliant. I only lost one basket case nuc and most local beekeepers had very few losses.
this winter looks like being a lot tougher.
I probably tried to increase too much from 17 to well over 30 but I met a guy in Stirling had increased from 20 to 60 this year. Wonder how his are doing?