>>What percentage of the total posts did the top 10 submit?
>
>>Go to http://www.bee-l.org , take a look and let us know.
>
>OK.  A search on all posts with containing the string "a" with the substring
>box checked, for the period "04/01/2011" to "04/30/2011" yielded no results
>and no error message about errors in the formatting of the request.

Probably because the server is still searching.  All messages contain the letter "a" in multiple instances.  

Either that or the search engine ignores a and the and an or will not accept strings under three characters in length for the reason stated above. No matter.  That is not the obvious approach.

Going to the BEE-L Home link, dependingh on how you set up your preferences, you should see something like this:

Latest Messages 
April Top Ten List 
 Jeffrey R. Hills <[log in to unmask]> 
 Mon, 2 May 2011 09:37:13 -0400
 
A Modified Two-queen System: “Tower” Colonies
 allen <[log in to unmask]> 
 Mon, 2 May 2011 09:40:10 -0400
 
Re: From the Dust Bin 
 Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]> 
 Mon, 2 May 2011 07:18:33 -0400
 
AIA number of inspectors 
 jimmy odom <[log in to unmask]> 
 Mon, 2 May 2011 08:13:30 -0400
 
Re: ALL My Bees Died 
 Karen Thurlow-Kimball <[log in to unmask]> 
 Mon, 2 May 2011 07:34:39 -0400
 
Re: ALL My Bees Died 
 Cam Bishop <[log in to unmask]> 
 Mon, 2 May 2011 05:59:26 -0400
 
Re: But does quantity equate with quality? 
 Chris Slade <[log in to unmask]> 
 Mon, 2 May 2011 04:50:49 -0400
 
Re: Response to Peter 
 Peter Edwards <[log in to unmask]> 
 Mon, 2 May 2011 07:49:26 +0100
 
Re: From the Dust Bin 
 Karen Thurlow-Kimball <[log in to unmask]> 
 Sun, 1 May 2011 15:41:44 -0400
 
Re: But does quantity equate with quality? 
 Peter Edwards <[log in to unmask]> 
 Sun, 1 May 2011 23:19:45 +0100
 

BEE-L  
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology
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The list is sorted by date and time.  

Sort by author by clicking on "From"

The data you need is presented now and we see there are 411 posts.

You should be able to do the rest.

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