[log in to unmask] writes:

I'm going to suggest that monitoring is not doing what we assume it's doing.

As per usual, the high losses are again confined to hobby beekeepers.  The commercial numbers were up to 28%, which is a tick higher than their usual average.

Given that the 'sky-is-falling' statistics from BIP always flag the hobbyists who include newbies, treatment free, natural beekeeping, can't keep my bees alive, along with some successful beekeepers versus the mid-20s loss reported by commercial year after year, I'd argue that the high losses by the hobby group reflects their management practices or lack of  and probably the way BIP gathers stats.

If a hobby beekeeper has one hive that fails to over-winter - that's a 100% loss.  Has two, one fails, that 50%.   Commercial folks are guesstimating over large numbers.  1 lost colony out of thousands has no real effect on the reporting stats.

Our classes indicate that until properly trained, those hobby beekeepers who can't keep their bees alive before taking the course, but can after really didn't know how to properly manage their bees, or even how to properly sample and treat to control mites.  It's always a joy to get emails saying - for first time in X years, my colonies all  survived, or I only lost 5-10%, etc.

My point, there's a fundamental difference btw the hobby group and the others.  How much is experience and management versus how the stats are gathered is difficult to ascertain.  But if the fundamental problem is there regardless of whether they monitor for mites or not, then the 'mites monitoring' stats are meaningless.

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