Back to bee survival...
Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) asks what hives were alive at the beginning or end of Sept, then asks how many were alive at the beginning of April.  And about 1000 more questions about management.  For a backyard beekeeper, those numbers are highly meaningful - we want those numbers to be 10% or lower!  For a commercial beekeeper, as Charlie pointed out, losses can be factored in to the “equation” of loss/profit, and losses can be rapidly recovered from.

Here's the losses by state from BIP: https://beeinformed.org/2017/05/26/preliminary-2016-2017-state-total-and-average-losses/

I would ask anyone involved in a bee club to design a survey and submit it to their members.  I did a beta version for 2 counties in northeast OH, with 23 people responding.  That's 10% of the number of respondents that ALL of OH contributed to BIP (233 responded for 2016-2017's survey span). The 2 clubs I surveyed had losses of 50%.  OH in 2016-2017 had losses of about 40%.  

OK, here is where the fun begins - if you have the dataset.  Does mite treatment method predict the likelihood that a beeK's colonies survived?  Not in my data.  That means the handful of people who did not treat had just as good a chance of their colonies surviving as those who used bottom board drops, powdered sugar shake or alcohol wash.  NOT what I was expecting at all.  VERY disappointing.

Just as disappointing (again, in my tiny dataset) was that percent survival was NOT predictable by years of experience or by mite TREATMENT method either.  Treatement free (1/4 of the sample) had the same chance of survival as the rest who treated.

Something that might explain why essentially nothing a beekeeper was doing seemed to improve the odds of survival for their hives:  When people are talking about their losses, they are largely unsure why their colonies died.  I hear reasons such as: they disappeared;  maybe it was mites; or moisture; or the cold?  Starvation.  People don't note relevant details about the state of the dead colony.  There is minimal understanding (and training) of what to look for to confirm or rule out mites, or even starvation, as the cause of death.  

We have one thorough autopsy protocol, from one of Bee-L's members http://nybeewellness.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/winter_deadout_key_2-24-14_final_draft-2.pdf , and I am wondering if any beekeeping clubs have been using this.  There are no pictures, and it needs a web programmer to make it easier.  Volunteers? 

We have Dan Coates, who is collecting autopsy information, but is contacting people one by one.  He has a good questionnaire, which draws attention to key facts that can be diagnostic.  

Honey Bee Suite has a great singe colony postmortem. 
https://honeybeesuite.com/csi-colony-postmortem/  

But... that's about all I've found.  How to learn from a deadout, or autopsy a hive, isn't on sites like Honey Bee Health Coalition, or other high-traffic sites like OSBA's site for OH beekeepers.  Such links aren't on county beekeeping sites either. 

Sadly, the clubs I belong to do not like to discuss bee losses, nor how to learn from them.  I guess I will leave it at that.  

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