Hello all,
     I've been lurking and following the talk about research and it woke up some of my latent education in the subject. I may have something to contribute. The mind wants straight forward simple answers and since, as Dee says the hive is an interactive system, the answers must be holistic. By it's nature research seeks to isolate the thing studied and hold the others constant. The things we cant account for are called, I think, confounding variables. The eye of the beholder may be one of them. 

I can still hear my professor talking about causality. Just because two things vary together doesn't mean that one causes the other. If one studies "tallness" one will determine that the taller a subject is the larger his feet will be. It's obvious that large feet do not cause tallness or vice-versa.

If mite reduction and small cell beekeeping go together and we hypothesize that this proves nothing and that the mite reduction is not "caused" by small cells (the null hypothesis) what direction can your thinking go in? What else is happening?

Reading all the work the small cell people go through with three regressions and foundationless frames, it's obvious that a lot of new wax gets made. Bob Harrison and others have said many times that if you put a swarm of bees on new equipment and don't treat for mites that they will likely last for two years before perishing.

What if it were something about the wax! New wax kills mites! Wow what a head line! I just toss this out as a way to point out how hard it is to control for this variable. It's not so silly though. I have it on good authority that bees add 2-Heptanone to the wax as they build. This is currently being studied. (I don't think it's secret but don't want to give the source with out permission). Here's an hypothesis for you. Bees add this hormone to the wax. It suppresses mite reduction. It fades over time. New wax reinstates the hormone as part of the hive environment. That's why keepers in Denmark are successful; that's why bees abscond; that's why small cell works. I'm pretty skeptical so don't send rockets but it does make you think doesn't it?

Dick Marron

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