>We have exceptionally low loss rates in our operation--virtually none due to mites, disease, or starvation.  Our main losses are due to queen failure (a minimal amount) or our own culling of poorly-performing colonies. Randy

Even here when the culling of poor coloneys is added, it seems to make the math harder to quantify.  Now, I am a new bee keeper and not confident on reconizing bee problims.  If I have a hive that just does not build up properly so make every hive sort of live on it's own and don't combine or truthfully requeen due to not being set up to raise my own,  so I let it die in winter.  How would this me counted when compared to just culling a hive?  It is a management differrence and it may make impact on bee work force but on hive count, the result would be the same.  This of course discounts later splits that may be made due to the extra work force due to mannaging culling in differrent fassions.

If you combine in fall or let the small stuff die in fall, would the numbers be differrent?  I read in an old book, I think abby warre, that healty hives that reduce population in fall end up with almost the same size winter cluster even if the hives were quite differrent up to that point.  I don't know if creadence can be put to this as a fact or a falsehood due to my experiance level.  I am assuming from randy's hive build up and decline artical, that there may be some baisis to abby's claim (but don't mind being corrected).

Just assuming that the hives end up close to the same size for winter cluster, then culling/combining during winter or losing hives that die, is it differrent management that really would not change what the loss number would be?  Just a differrent way to skin a cat?

I don't ask this question in a way that says I know but more that I don't know but would like to.  I do understand when mitigating possible problims that managing practices can make lemondaid out of lemons.  It is still hard to count properly with all the info and without tinting the counting with what you actually do then what would have actually been the differrance had you did it differrent.  That seems to be what this thread is asking about.  

If it is working and not sending you backwards, you can reconize there may be improvements to be had but it is almost the guy trying them and seeing the differrance in bottom line rather then an outsider trying to add up what is going on.  So if you had two people wanting exactly the same thing from there bees in simular areas and close enough to see everything being done in both places, it would be easy to compare which and why one might be doing better.  If you collect numbers from many doing many differrent things and wanting many differrent things from keeping bees, it seems an almost immpossible task to come up with a best practices of bee keeping using those numbers together.  

I do think the numbers just like the honey harvest numbers per state can be useful in a broad sence on broad things like north dakota has more pertential to make more honey per hive then Mo does.  This may give some kind of general guage for you to use to compare how you are doing and so may have some use and is better then nothing but that is about it.
I like that the number are there for me to have a base to decide against from what is happening with what I am actually doing.
Cheers
gww

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