> Curious to hear others' thoughts.

As I am sure you realize, it may be that the factors are not directly correlated, or if the correlate, the reasons why they do may not be the ones that occur to us. For example, supposedly hives that are left completely alone have a better survival rate than those managed for honey. Does this mean management is at fault? Not really, it probably means that colonies that swarm and remain small during the season have a lower mite load. 

Hives that are managed for maximum honey production tend to have higher mite loads because varroa prosper in large colonies and/or these colonies may be gaining mites from drift or robbing. What is the message here? If I don't manage the hives for honey production I may have far lower losses but honey production would be zero, so what would be the point? I have always insisted that the bees pay their own way, they are not my pets. 

> highest losses were for those past 25 yrs (45%), lowest were for those with only 0-5 yrs (41%).

I am not a statistician, but I would say with a sample size of 23 that 41% and 45% are about the same, given the margin for error. As you saw from the BeeInformed stats, backyard beekeepers reported 40% loss vs commercial at 28%. But again, there are far too many factors to draw specific conclusions from these numbers. 

For example, the number of years of beekeeping. Remember that the beekeeping of 40 years ago was far different than now and we have to adapt to change. Those that don't may have greater losses, due to inability to adapt. In our area beekeepers learned years ago to move their bees south for winter; those that don't do this may lose more bees but they don't incur the expense of moving back and forth. Again, what is the point? You have to consider input/output and not just focus on colony count.

PLB

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