Despite your repeated criticisms of the scientific method on this List, as far as I'm concerned, I'd put my money on the findings of well-designed studies, as opposed to commercial beekeeper anecdotal reports, any day.



Your missing my point,  let me try again, apparently I am not explaining my thought well.   Its not intended as critism of the methods or results.  But of the measurement system.

Every queen by genetics responds differently to flows and the environment,  as well as hive size variables, virus and many other variables we cannot control such as where that hive forages.

We all know 2 hives side by side will react and grow differently,  many of us will assume it’s a variable with the queen. But the reality is, we don't know. We are fairly clueless as to why one queen lays 1000 eggs a day,  and one lays 1200,  or why one stops or slows down,  and an other is takeing off to swarm mode.  

In Science or engineering,  we use measurmewnts to solve issues,  we reduce or eliminate variables until we get to some confidence level.  In queens we can compare  box A  to box B,  but we cant compare them to any sort of standard.  Everything is based on the curve of that yard.

No one can tell me that say Pendalls queens will outproduce Hardemans (names at random) based on any data point,  be it pollen,  honey or brood.  That’s not true in other AG area.  Heck  corn you can pick any one of a dozen criteria from temp days, to soil types to get what you think is best.  


My apology if that seemed like critical of the research,   not my point.  The research can be pointed any way you like,  based on a very arbitrary measurement system.  That is the point I am trying to make.  We as an industry have no real standards or even it appears, common goals.


Be careful though about crediting researchers and ignore ground truth, lots of areas where that will bite you. Many cases where the researcher would do well to spend some time in the fields.  Part of that depends on the end goal though,  beekeeping seems to be one area we have a lot of people doing research that is not supporting the actual industry.  Sure would be nice to see that change a bit.  My comments are not intended to disparage the research,  but give some support to the commercial guys.  We all know that they are not well represented here,  and it seems by many post they are not well thought of at many times.



Charles

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