> what do we have in beekeeping that correlates to a real standard like that? LBS per hive?? Nope that depends on configuration? Frames of brood? Season dependant.
Charles, these things can be measured. If I have 100 hives, I can work out the average production, regardless of what size supers I use. At the Dyce Lab, we did dozens of trials where we weighed hives in midsummer, where we measured brood area, where we sampled for mites. The main thing is that these things must be done consistently.
Of course there are variables, that is exactly what we are looking for. If you have hives with Russian bees, Italian bees, and VSH, you can measure the differences in how they perform. Of course honey production varies from season to season, but that has nothing to do with how the colonies differ in response during a given period.
Here is a study conducted with the assistance of Tom Rinderer, et al
> This study compared the responses of two Varroa-resistant honey bee stocks, pure Russian honey bees (RHB) and out-crossed Varroa Sensitive Hygienic bees, Pol-line (POL) to DWV infection to that of Varroa- susceptible stock, Italian honey bees (IHB). This study suggests that RHB showed some degree of resistant to DWV as shown by no reduction on weight and numerically lower proportion of wing deformity when compared with the other bee stocks.
Khongphinitbunjong, K., de Guzman, L. I., Rinderer, T. E., Tarver, M. R., Frake, A. M., Chen, Y., & Chantawannakul, P. (2016). Responses of Varroa-resistant honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) to Deformed wingvirus. Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology, 19(4), 921-927.
ΒΆ
Will you say that their results are invalid because of hive configuration or seasonality? If everything is the same except the strain of bees, then we can assume that measured differences can be attributed to: the strain of bees. That's the scientific method.
PLB
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