>Okay,, so whats the measurement set then?  Honey?  Just survival??  Splits

> or  swarms??
>

The two most reflective metrics of colony health, IMHO, are the population
of adult bees in a hive, and weight gain.  Population of course would
include "survival," and weight gain would reflect how well they survived.

Splits or swarms need not be measured, although unsuccessful supersedure
during the course of swarming would need to be looked at if we consider the
impact of pesticides and miticides.

>Any studies that are out to look at and see??
>

The latest JAR has a number of studies, which I am currently reviewing.

>
> >Whats the end goal?  To the pracitical beek?  Just a canary in the coal
> mine, or publishing info on BMP in their areas??


My end goal is twofold:
1.  To ground truth whether certain agricultural areas are killing fields
for bees, or whether it is, as the PPP industry claims, more a beekeeper
management issue, and
2.  To demonstrate whether using BMPs is cost effective at improving the
bottom line in beekeeping.

Charlie, my wife, who watches TV, just called me into her den to see
vanEngelsdorp, Hackenberg, Time magazine's science editor, among others on
some morning show with a very pretty hostess.

The audience, the media, our legislators got mixed messages, with some
saying that the main problems were varroa and nutrition, and others saying
that we needed to ban the neonics.  So what's an elected legislator to do?
The easy course would be to ban the neonics, despite an overwhelming
absence of evidence.

On the other hand, a network of sentinel apiaries could give us hard data
on what are the actual factors causing the increased colony mortality that
we see these days.

--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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