> Commenters here do a disservice when 
> they put words in the mouths of others.

One does everyone a disservice when thinking that the plural of "anecdote"
is "data".

What do Quinby in 1884, Root in 1890, Dzierzon in 1835, Phillips in 1915,
and the others quoted have in common?

Their anecdotes were 100% data-free, and surprisingly, their notebooks (if
any) were not preserved, so data cannot be gleaned.

But notebooks were not de rigueur back then - this was beekeeping from the
days before actual hard-nosed science was needed.
Beekeeping was not forced to become a hard-nosed science until all the
invasive species started showing up.

The blog post does explain how the mostly "leave-alone" practices of the
prior centuries often resulted in losses that were often just as bad as the
losses we see today, but what is not mentioned is the massive difference in
the amount of husbandry effort required to avoid 100% losses today, versus
the minimal husbandry required in past centuries to be a successful
beekeeper.  These historical beekeepers spent most of their time finding
enough boxes for all the splits and swarms.  Husbandry effort approached
"zero",  as did data collection, hence the wacky and divergent theories on
so many basic issues.  This sort of euphoric situation continued up to the
early 1980s, and then the practice of "agriculture" became little more than
a rear-guard action against the collateral damage done by world trade and
containerized shipping.

To be blunt, the beekeepers of prior centuries have almost nothing practical
to teach us about how to deal with the serious problems of today, as none of
the problems wed now face existed back then.  They have (quaint) things to
say about what to do AFTER one has dealt with the pests, the pesticides, and
the fungicides.

The problem of mentoring is simple, and harsh - one must teach novices how
to merely keep their bees ALIVE long enough so that the bees themselves can
teach them how to be better beekeepers.  Hubris kills more novice hives than
anything else these days.

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