People may be wondering why we are discussing models and predictions and how it relates to beekeeping.

Granted, this is seems to be a diversion from bee topics, but it is not. 

Periodically we come across mode;ls of bee behaviour or treatments.   As much as we may wish otherwise, they are all necessarily imprecise at best in general, and, at worst, completely wrong in any specific case. Maybe that case is yours. 

Modelling and our trust in modelling is central to all our experiences and relates to beekeeping in that we tend to believe generalities and averages.  Such predictions are necessarily macroscopic or based on current and past macroscopic data, thus must completely miss the more minute details that are averaged out.

Sorry for another nautical example, but many boats are run onto shoals because the chart in use was an overview -- too far zoomed out -- and did not reveal the local detail.  Sometimes features shift also, like sandbars.

So it is with weather. Many bee losses and other events are missed by averages and models.  Local effects are overlooked.  Unique events are unaccounted for in claims like "90% accurate". What does that even mean?  90% of what?  What is glossed over in that  inaccurate 10%?  

A total destruction event like an unexpected freeze in an orange grove that could have been mitigated with fogging?  A hurricane that veers off course and hits an unprepared  populated area? (Sorry for your loss, but we're 90% accurate).

I gave several easy examples that are rather stark, and even though they are not directly about bees they are illustrative of how we are taken in and rocked to sleep by such claims.  

Local weather anomalies happen more that one might think and they kill wintering bees without leaving any evidence.  Unnoticed and unpredicted tornadoes and dust devils overturn hives out in the fields.  That is the 10%.  These details are not predictable in the general forecast, but may be very important to the beekeeper.

Beware of generalities.  I used to be invited to speak at various conferences and was reasonably popular.  My last such talk was something like "Everything you think you know about bees is at least partly wrong".  It was well illustrated with (too) many examples.  I gave it on opposite sides of the continent in two locations in two countries . For some reason I have not had invitations since.

I had retired from bees and become somewhat irrelevant by then anyhow and had nothing more to say, but  I was a skunk at a garden party. People want to believe.  

Most people, including some very clever and intelligent ones, need to believe something and will thus believe anything rather than having a hole in their narrative and simply not knowing.

Anyhow we have both sides of the story now and I am done with the topic. 

Those who want to believe will believe, and those of us who doubt will continue to doubt. 

That won't change, but it takes all kinds.

Interesting and important topic, and thanks for the dialogue but I have spoken and I am done.

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