There has been a lot of talk about starvation being a huge and unusual cause 
of bee loss in commercial outfits in the US.  I am of the opinion that the 
apparent prominence is an artefact of the survey method, not a reflection of 
reality.

Maybe I was a sleep in class, but when I heard the report I thought that the 
survey measured the *number of beekeepers* experiencing each cause of bee 
loss, *not the colony numbers lost to each*.     It seems that people have 
morphed the prevalence figures into loss percentages.

As a result of the survey method, even a few scattered losses to starvation 
in an outfit carry the same weight as heavy losses due to any cause, since 
my understanding is that the tabulation was by number of beekeepers 
reporting, not number of hives lost.

Starvation happens everywhere and often, for various reasons, usually known, 
but is usually very limited in extent.  Everyone sees it from time to time. 
Since isolated starvation events are very common, the tabulation showed many 
beekeepers reporting starvation, even if the beekeepers had only a few 
starvation losses.  I would have reported seeing starvation, even though I 
lost only one hive, it was insignificant, and it was a freak occurrence .

On the other hand, things like CCD events are less generally distributed, 
even though when they happen, they result in high and sometimes total 
losses.

Such more catastrophic and significant events show lower on the tabulation, 
though.  Even though they may well have caused far more total loss, their 
prevalence is lower.

Am I wrong?

 

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