Hey can we get back to bees? I really need to talk about bees. My poor husband is so tired of hearing about them...
Two years ago, I did a survey of my 2 bee clubs on winter losses. I asked some relatively detailed questions, as well as years of experience, whether they monitored for mites, and what/when they treated (if they did). Got 23 people to respond... and our losses were close to the average for 2016.
That's not the interesting part. You see, I had done the survey to illustrate the importance of 1) monitoring with the alcohol wash, rather than any other method; and 2) to show that treating led to better survival.
Well, those factors were not predictive of hive survival. A lot of people who didn't treat had 100% survival, a lot who did had 100% losses.
Worse, odds of survival did not increase by numbers of years beekeeping.
So I figured we were dumb and the sample size was too low. But then I found out I could play with BIP's survey results. What fun! So I went to https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey/ and looked first at monitoring for mites. That should up the odds of hive survival, right?
Actually, for OH, all years, losses were SIGNIFICANTLY higher if they monitored (43.5%) compared to not (35%). Well, maybe not significantly - tho the error bars don't overlap...
Well.... certainly people _treating_ for mites had better survival, right? Little bit - 37% losses if they treated instead of 45%.
And years of experience increases odds of hives surviving, right? Well, no...highest losses were for those past 25 yrs (45%), lowest were for those with only 0-5 yrs (41%).
Again, that's in OH, for all years. Maybe we just can't learn and the rest of the nation is better... I have come up with an explanation - a theory, rather - as to why these results are happening. Curious to hear others' thoughts.
I have been wondering why we haven't seen a paper or press release about what management practices result in the lowest losses.... well, this may be why we haven't seen anything.
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