Bob said:

> Even if the USDA_ARS claimed they had a bee which did
> not need treatment I would only risk a 100 hives at 
> first. Been burned too many times by claims.

I don't know anyone with more hives than fingers and toes
upon which to count them who would go "all in" on something
new without first trying a small-scale roll out for a season.

It is not that everyone with a new technique is wrong or
cannot be trusted, it is just that techniques tend to be
very hard to explain and understand without practice,
and in a craft where technique matters so much, everything
has to be exposed to all techniques in order to verify 
that it is compatible.

A beekeeper is a lot like a magician, in that one must
learn techniques and be able to do them effortlessly,
and THEN one can assemble the techniques into "an act".
It may be why mentoring works so well at teaching the
craft of beekeeping, and why books and websites and 
even videos are so unsuccessful at doing more than
raising questions and starting arguments.

Randy said:

> When we moved to almonds, we left one or two colonies
> that had only 2-3 frames and that we didn't expect to 
> survive the rest of winter.  But when we returned to 
> those yards this month to restock with nucs, many of 
> the expected deadouts were thriving!

Doesn't this clearly indicate that the colonies mentioned
were misdiagnosed in the first place?  In my experience,
there are no miraculous recoveries of colonies, there are
no entomological medical miracles.  There are only 
colonies that prove the beekeeper's diagnosis wrong by 
surviving unexpectedly, or, more often, prove the 
beekeeper's methods are faulty by dying unexpectedly.

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