I wrote to "BeeInformed" about the 50% quote and here is the exchange of
emails.

I am on the BeeL group and Jeff Pettis has been quoted to have calculated
> 50% bee kill this winter. Is that number accurate, never said, or an
> informed guess?
>
> I ran a census of our local beekeepers in mid coast Maine who attended our
> monthly meeting, and losses were more about 30% (about average for a mix of
> new and long time beekeepers). Most commercial/experienced beekeepers were
> about 15% (who managed more than 50 hives), while the hobby beekeepers were
> in the 35%  area. Even then, 40% of them had no losses and the rest were
> Varroa with only a few to other reasons (3 hives were run over by a snow
> plow).
>
> My guess is that nationally the larger losses were commercial pollinators
> and they communicate with Jeff while he gets much less input from the
> hinterland.
>
> Bill Truesdell
> Bath, Maine
>

 Hi Bill,
> I think you may have misunderstood Jeff's comment.  His quote (in the NY
> Times) mentioned that the losses would be higher than in the past and it
> was the beekeepers interviewed as reporting losses around 50%.  The losses,
> yet to be confirmed by our National Winter Loss and Management survey, will
> be released on May 7th to the news media.  Our team has also given talks
> around the country and many of the clubs were also experiencing higher than
> 'normal' (but again, what is normal anymore?). Our survey is open until
> Monday night so we have to wait to do the calculations until it closes.
>  Hope this helps and I also hope that Maine DOES have lower than average
> losses!  All our best wishes to you and your club.  We did also have a
> beekeeper who responded to our survey who lost all 3 hives...due to a tree
> falling on them so I understand the snow plow losses!
>
> Karen
>

I wrote back to get permission to post her email as well as ask a few more
questions.

>
> No, I have no issues in you posting this on the Bee-List.
>
> The answer to your Loss question is not as straight forward as you might
> think and I have attached a paper where it is all laid out but may be more
> information than you want to know.  We use a set of equations worked
> on among many European countries as well as Dennis here in the US so that
> losses can be standardized around the world, and as you astutely pointed
> out, we need to compensate for colonies gained (purchases or split) as well
> as colonies sold during the same time frame as the losses occurred.  Please
> see pages 3 and 4 for the Total loss equations and page 7 for the Average
> loss.  As you can see from the Avg. Loss equation, the size of the
> operation does not come into play.  And yes! We do split out results by
> size of operation later in our Results section of the BIP website along
> with lots of other management practices (commercial vs. not, Migratory vs.
> not, feed, queens, treatments, etc.
>
> Hope this helps and best,
> Karen


End of quootes- So Jeff did not say 50% but beekeepers did. He did say the
losses were "higher than the past".

So we need to wait and see.

As I noted, my antennas go up when nice round numbers like 50% are quoted.
Nice that Pettis kept it general.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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