a Pete B snip followed by > my comment.. 
The trend was that 3/4 of the colonies were dead by spring, none of them being treated for mites. I suppose you could say, but 1/4 survived -- treatment free!

>Perhaps read a bit more closely.  Of course after the fact* I always try to figure out what went wrong. The bulk bees used were from my own non treatment source (this was to avoid contamination) and the queens were provided from a well known queen rearing operation that does treat (I do not know with what????).  In 'other' nonofficial test I have done here (meaning on my own dime) the EXPECTED survival of queens from treated sources in a non treatment program is about 9 months.

>I will note here that the experimental bees were treated in the fall of the year but likely way to late < one of the young ladies who authored the paper and did the varroa test pointed this out to me after I had done the treatment.. She is a pretty experience beekeeper and I tend to have a bias toward experience when it comes to dealing with problems...

>*I come from a heavy industrial/building trades background and the program I learned there when you run into problems or errors is that you 1) figure out what you did right, 2) figure out what you did wrong, 3) create a dialogue or program to minimize the problem in the future. For myself (who does no documented research) a good bit of my effort after the fact is dealing with the question... How can (or could) we do this better next time.

Gene in Central Texas...  

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