a Debbee Corcoran question... 
I am curious, does anyone agree with this article? 

http://www.beeculture.com/the-apicultural-coverup/


my comments..
my primary objection to this article is the title.  why beyond 'flaming the issue' would you even use a word that pointed to conspiracy?  is Mr Ross biased?   well yes we ALL are to some extent.  

who thinks here that varroa, nosema c. and even yes perhaps neonics are not at least some small part of of the complex factors that may well be contributing too higher death loss? < which at least casually to me seem to be Mr Ross's hypothesis. 

 I myself would also suggest the large new'ish interest by folks with little experience in keeping bees could also be a substantial part of the loss.  Inexperience in recognizing problems (health wise and in terms of provision) and yes perhaps the 'true believer' mind set of the no treatment crowd could be a part of the 'reported' high losses.  And the larger question of 'are the numbers real' I would guess largely depends on the accuracy and reliability of the survey and the statistics used < which even when well done is always subject to question.

as a no treatment beekeeper I do some times think folks worry a lot about varroa and certainly this one issue has generated a lot of money for research and I suspect the investment in a lot of anti varroa approaches that were a total waste of time and money.  the known negative effects of some of the early on treatments is now quite well KNOWN so on some time scale (from approximate to ultimate) these may in fact only have traded off one problem for another.  I would also suspect that the research folks will continue to ride the varroa band wagon until it looses it wheels.

depending primarily on the time I the beekeeper invest in my bees my losses here normally run between .5% and 12%.  I do have some varroa loss in the late summer but make up replacement during the same time period that this 'loss' really seems significant.  starvation or hive depletion (from splitting) is the largest 2 categories for my own loss.   both of these are more about decisions made by the beekeeper than anything else.   
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