Seth,

I don't reach the same conclusion from the study you attached.

1. For eggs, young and old larva the numbers for OA and control are
statistically the same, i.e. the error bars overlap. Only for the 48 hour
egg data do the error bars almost not overlap. I assume this is why they
conclude that OA is safe for brood.

2. The losses seem extremely high, even for the control. The control data
says I pull a frame of brood and 35% of the eggs don't make it, or 20% of
the young brood. Most beekeepers would consider the resultant brood pattern
quite bad. Most of the time my brood patterns are quite solid, with few
dead cells. Why is their loss level so high for the control? What else is
going on?

3. The last graph is a bit odd.
  - If OA isn't effective, one would expect the same results as the
control, but it is worse (with no overlap of the error bars). How to
explain that? What else is going on?
  - And the control count drops after the other hives are treated. Why?

I wonder what the methodology was, it isn't explained.
How big were the sample sizes? If similar to the other studies in the file,
then probably pretty small.

Perhaps they published a full paper that explains all, but based on the
supplied URL I think more information is needed.

Scott

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