> Shaking the bees onto brand new 
> equipment is not a sure thing at all, 
> in any case. 

Here's a case with data:

"Evaluation of the Shaking Technique for the Economic Management of American
Foulbrood Disease of Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae)"
Journal of Economic Entomology 101(4):1095-1104. 2008 
Pernal, Albright, Melathopoulos
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1603/0022-0493(2008)101%5B1095:EOTSTF%5D2.0
.CO%3B2
or
http://tinyurl.com/l5xwq3h


"...concentrations of P. larvae spores in honey and adult worker bees
sampled from colonies shaken onto all comb and foundation treatments
declined over time and were undetectable in adult bee samples 3 months after
shaking."

"In contrast, colonies that were reestablished on the original infected comb
remained heavily infected resulting in consistently high levels of spores,
and eventually, their death."

"In a subsequent experiment, production of colonies shaken onto foundation
was compared with that of colonies established from package (bulk) bees or
that of overwintered colonies. Economic analysis proved shaking to be 24%
more profitable than using package bees. These results suggest that shaking
bees onto frames of foundation in the spring is a feasible option for
managing AFB in commercial beekeeping operations where antibiotic use is
undesirable or prohibited."

> Historical note: shaking treatment 
> was dreamed up in the 1800s, along 
> with other progressive methods like 
> fumigating with formaldehyde.

No, it was more likely to have been the 1700s, as the cited paper explains
in headnote (2). 

So, shaking works, even in controlled studies with statistical significance,
published in well-respected peer-reviewed journals.  Sometimes the
techniques of generations long past turn out to be optimal after all.  I
know it is very rare, but Whoomp, there it is.

> I don't care what novices think of me. 
> They should be listening, not telling me what to do. 

They have a third option.  They can simply walk away. Then one has
neighboring beekeepers who will drive their hives straight into a ditch for
several years in a row, and your own hives will rob out those hives, and
reinfest themselves with varroa far too late in the fall for you to do much
about it.  Then one loses more hives as a direct result of a curmudgeonly
approach to people no less skilled and no more idealistic than we were
ourselves when we started out.

Teaching novices is simple self-defense and self-preservation.  You may not
want to be your brother's keeper, but you certainly are your brother's
beekeeper, like it or not.

> the point of view expressed by 
> some folks, which boils down to 
> personal opinion backed up by 
> the statement "because I say so."

"Because I say so" won't work any better than "They should be listening, not
telling me what to do."
Personal opinion is ok, but hard data from 3rd parties is better.  As my
father says "Nothing makes a graphic point as graphically as a graph, so
offer choices and explain the possible consequences of each choice.


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