Peter Borst wrote:
>Right. These statistical presentations are so heavily weighted with selection bias as to be near meaningless.

The Bee Informed project readily admits that they are working with "dirty data".  Many data sets have been discarded or grouped in separate catagories ("Multi-state beekeepers" for instance).  Therefore they try not to make cause/effect conclusions from the data, rather they just offer raw numbers.

Hence the conclusion I draw from the numbers showing that winter losses are higher in northern states than southern states is that winter in Northern States is simply a harsh environment for colony survival.  The "DUH" factor in that observation is obviously high, but it's Occam's Razor man.  Speculation including management style, Varroa counts, honey supers into October, etc. may offer plausible cause/effect, but the simple fact is northern winters are hard on bees.

Aaron Morris - thinking lies, damned lies, maps and statistics!

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