Paul
One last point to make to your position that there is only one way to skin a cat.

The guy that had the hives that had type B DWV and so his bees were not getting the type A virous that was more deadly and he was not treating and his bees were living.  Is he not treatment free because his bees had a benigh virus that kept the other virus from harming him.  I say he was treatment free even though his bees were dealing with mites differrent then tom seeleys forrest bees were dealing with them.  That does not mean if someone like randy wants to pick a path to try and strengthen his bees that doesn't have to look at all the sience that he is aware of and come up with a proceedure he can control that is not too expensive to make it prohibitive to even try, cause he does.  But Seeleys forest did what it does regaurdless of the (what I think is smart) path that randy took.  It does not have to come about in exactly the same way and yes some may be faster and some may not be working but sometimes it is not extra ordinary that poeple come up with simular outcomes by differrent routes.  Ask nine bee keepers thier favorite split method and take the ten differrent answers they give you and most will probly give you a good split.
More then one way to skin a cat and sometimes you just have to pick your poisen.  I believe there are some having success even if it is not known why they are having it.  Even the places they studie in a controlled way, they are using reasoning to come to conclutions and if they missed anything that they find later, thier conclutions may evolve.  Many many of times this is proved out with later studies of what were good studies.  Take mites eating fat or blood, it is still not understood exactly and studies are being questioned or how does olixic kill mites.
Cheers
gww

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