"A pan-European epidemiological study reveals honey bee colony survival depends on beekeeper education and disease control"
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0172591
looking at the BIP last 5 years
Only about 4% of the "back yard" (50 and under club) ran alcohol washes, those that didn't took 40% higher losses
the backyard keepers that ran Amitraz had only 25.4% losses
As such I would not rule out experience/education, there seems to be a strong trend the better you take care of your bees the better the survival.
There is a trend in the hobby market to try to paint commercials as abusive to thier stock... the loss % say other wise
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