> On Mar 25, 2017, at 5:20 AM, Deborah Hewitt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> At the Maryland State Beekeepers Association February meeting, the University of Maryland BIP representative reported that drone brood trapping does not affect colony survival. https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey <https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey>
This is one of my big problems with the BIP survey data.

Their numbers on survival with carbohydrate feed for example show that if you used a carbohydrate feed, you are more likely to have lost a colony than if you did not. At least that’s what people are claiming it says. The problem is that the survey says nothing about the state of the colonies before feed was applied.

What if %100 of those colonies would have died without feed? Then the fact that only 38% of them died over the winter begins to look pretty good.

Then the claim becomes carbohydrate feed doesn’t affect winter survival. When we all no that’s not necessarily true (don’t we?).

Drone removal does not affect colony survival seems to be an equally meaningless claim.   It doesn’t address methodology of drone brood removal. It doesn’t say what method of mite management brood removal is compared to. How often was drone brood removed? What other mite management techniques were used.

Respectfully,

David Baker
Denver, CO USA
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