a Lauri Miller snip... 
I posed that question primarily for an example of an often asked, very general question.  Not to offend anyone in the business. Not to specifically target migratory operations and all the different aspects of them.

You could ask the same question about new beekeepers. Why are they so hard on their bees? The answer is multifaceted and complicated. In a nut shell, ignorance is generally the cause. The simple answer could be inexperienced shouldn't have bees until they reach some level of competency . But that's not an option, now is it? So we look further.

my comments and questions...
well in my own experience long distance migratory beekeeping is pretty hard on the bees, the equipment and the help.  living out of a suit case is generally not easy and the movement of bees and equipment across extensive distance includes risk that no one can really plan for.  year ago one of my employer had reduced the loss to a number (mind you this was a average and in the worst case could be much much higher) which was 5% per long distance move.  I am certain you can do the math but as an example if you put 500+ hives on a semi about 25 were essentially dead outs when you unloaded them at the other end of the line.  Of course the more moves there are within a season the more this number grows.

on the other why are new beekeepers so hard on bees?  certainly this is more about not having experience with this odd kind of livestock than anything else.  certainly as someone who has done some training myself you can see all sorts of bad behavior by the new beekeeper that without a doubt makes it hard on the bees.  I do often wonder where they picked up these bad habits... but then again on occasions I have personally witnessed similar bad behavior by folks that the state of Texas and this university says should know better.  I just have to guess that some folks training has fallen just a bit short of my own expectations.

as to most things when it come to researching bees you have hit the nail on the head in that it is difficult to have an experimental design that includes all variable and yes indeed the importance of these variable may also vary widely from location to location (even within the same geographical area).  

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