Hey can we get back to bees?  I really need to talk about bees.  My poor husband is so tired of hearing about them...

Two years ago, I did a survey of my 2 bee clubs on winter losses.  I asked some relatively detailed questions, as well as years of experience, whether they monitored for mites, and what/when they treated (if they did).  Got 23 people to respond... and our losses were close to the average for 2016.

That's not the interesting part.  You see, I had done the survey to illustrate the importance of 1) monitoring with the alcohol wash, rather than any other method; and 2) to show that treating led to better survival.  

Well, those factors were not predictive of hive survival.  A lot of people who didn't treat had 100% survival, a lot who did had 100% losses.  

Worse, odds of survival did not increase by numbers of years beekeeping.

So I figured we were dumb and the sample size was too low.  But then I found out I could play with BIP's survey results.  What fun!  So I went to https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey/ and looked first at monitoring for mites. That should up the odds of hive survival, right?

Actually, for OH, all years, losses were SIGNIFICANTLY higher if they monitored (43.5%) compared to not (35%).  Well, maybe not significantly - tho the error bars don't overlap...

Well.... certainly people _treating_ for mites had better survival, right?  Little bit - 37% losses if they treated instead of 45%.

And years of experience increases odds of hives surviving, right?  Well, no...highest losses were for those past 25 yrs (45%), lowest were for those with only 0-5 yrs (41%).

Again, that's in OH, for all years.  Maybe we just can't learn and the rest of the nation is better... I have come up with an explanation - a theory, rather - as to why these results are happening.  Curious to hear others' thoughts.

I have been wondering why we haven't seen a paper or press release about what management practices result in the lowest losses.... well, this may be why we haven't seen anything.  

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html