> This fact is often lost on people and can cause a lot of needless argument if it
is not understood and agreed that the data under consideration -- anecdotal
or documented -- may only be a small and unrepresentative or partially
representative sample.

Thank you Allen. Someone else understands! Not one single data set is without some sort of skew. In order to get at the truth of a set, one has to detect and compensate for skew. In order to make a strong case for some questionable point of view, you can skew the data any way you like, if that's what you want. 

Also, thank you Randy, for wandering into this thicket with an open mind to try to tease out the useful information that may in fact lie there. What is almost comical is that some folks seem to  think that scientists and researchers aren't interested in this. Far from the truth! In fact, use of essential oils and breeding for resistance were tried decades ago. 

Case in point: Tom Seeley. He wants to study honey bee behavior, but varroa and other diseases have become the bane of researchers existence. So, he has taken up the challenge to find a hardier, less dependent honey bee. But he was also one of the first to document that queens raised from so-called feral hives did not convey resistance to their colonies.

PLB

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