I should mention here something that passed by a while back and which I have searched for without success ever since.

There was mention here -- I believe that mentioned it at one point at the time -- that use of fumagillin and Apivar by beekeepers and extension efforts had apparently returned Alberta winter losses to the long-time normal that year.  

The obvious implication made by many and not dismissed by anyone, was that nosema and varroa had been the apparent causes of the increasingly severe winter losses over the past decade.

What was not as widely bruited was that the following year, losses were as bad or worse than ever, drawing that conclusion into question. 

The severity of winter is a huge factor that confounds efforts to find trends and assign causes, is the quality and timing of the preceding flows and harvest.  

Determining these trends is not simple, since reporting is derived from beekeeper responses to questionnaires, and the responses may vary in accuracy and depend on their understanding of questions asked and their understanding of how the results will be used.  Each of those influences can vary from year to year.

Anyhow, I thought I should mention this as that one winter's success has been used to exonerate other factors suspected of contributing to shorter bee life and colony viability.  Maybe we need to think again.

Hopefully, others more intimately associated with the project will comment here.

BTW, after this mild winter, Alberta winter loss again looks to be on the low side of normal -- AFAIK.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm