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Bee Informed National Survey

35K views 122 replies 19 participants last post by  Oldtimer 
#1 ·
Please go to http://beeinformed.org/participate/ and take the survey. It can be pretty involved depending on your specific case, but do what you can.

I just took the survey and am looking at some of the results from last year. Colony losses between different management styles (no non-bee derived products, natural only, prefer natural, use anything, other) were not statistically significant. In fact, the the range was between 31-36% with the first option rating at about 33%.

The difference between migratory and non-migratory was 30%, 34% respectively.

http://beeinformed.org/results/

We see a lot of numbers in a lot of different directions, but the averages are not statistically different. I mentioned previously the differences between treating and non treating for varroa specifically were less than ten percent, I'm looking at the graph now and losses with no varroa treatment were 37% and treated were 29%, so only 8% difference. It's clear from the numbers that the ones who treated are more often commercial beekeepers, averaging 150 colonies, and the ones who didn't treat were less so, averaging 20 colonies.

According to the stats, powdered sugar was NOT helpful, actually increasing losses compared to whatever else was done.

Coumaphos only ~2.5% better than doing nothing.

Formic Acid, 6% better than nothing.

Fluvalinate, 2% better than nothing.

Miscellaneous herbal products, 3% better than nothing.

Small Cell, 1% worse than nothing on average, but varying widely. Using small cell in all colonies 2% better than in no colonies, but still widely varying. Shows a small bad correlation for going half way as it were.

SSB 2% better than nothing.

Here's an interesting one, drone removal, using it 1% worse than not using it. Dodged a bullet there.

Terramycin and Tylosin, 2% better than nothing.

Fumagillin and Nosevet, wash.


Again, I'm not seeing anything all the useful in treating to begin with. Most of these numbers say that the treatment does not do anything statistically significant. The best looking product is Formic Acid, but it is only correlated with increased survival by 6%. It's hard for me to see that a 6% increase justifies the cost and time it takes to treat. One thing treating does do is make for more consistent results.

On the other hand, many of us have experienced the 'going cold turkey' paradigm, both personally and vicariously. It must be noted that there is a big difference between going cold turkey and being cold turkey. So it may be that these numbers are more due to avoided losses from the switching process than differences in management. It's kind of like a tax on not changing.

Just a few thoughts.

Take the survey, get your information in there for this year's results. This information is helpful for all beekeepers.
 
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#3 ·
Sol,

I haven't looked at the results. But, I'm struggling to understand what you have reported. Treatment improves survival by 8%. But, the most effective treatment only improves survival by 6%? Is the 8% due to more than one type of treatment?

I'm kind of leery of gleaning specifics from these types of surveys. They can give an overall view of things. But, do you think the data is good enough to make generalizations? I don't. There is no control over who enters data. I find very few beekeepers know what is really going on in their hives and make assumptions without having any data to back it up.

Tom
 
#4 ·
Is the 8% due to more than one type of treatment?
If I were to venture a guess, that would be it.


But, do you think the data is good enough to make generalizations?
Yes. That's what data is for. With a sample size of thousands, it is a good representative (though not exhaustive) result.


I find very few beekeepers know what is really going on in their hives and make assumptions without having any data to back it up.
If you had looked at the data, you would have seen that such an action was not required. That's the beauty of science (though this is not a scientific study by any stretch.) You can enter in the inputs and the results and lots of times you can back out intermediate steps which show you something you would not have guessed. In this case, the data shows how effective (or ineffective) individual treatments actually are as well as other variables.
 
#9 ·
You mean as an option in the survey? I don't think that was an option, and I believe the survey is closed, but it will open again next spring.

It appears that since I posted the numbers above, some new data came in. So it seems that the best treatment increased survival by 10%. Still doesn't seem worth it to be considering my losses were 9% last winter.

I bumped the thread because I kept wanting to point to it but could never find it when I needed it. I'll try to post the link when the survey comes around next year as well.
 
#12 ·
The denominator is not the number of losses, but the total number of hives, in this case 100.

To make this real for me, using some numbers from the survey, if I were to treat, I would lose 25*.27 = 6 hives. If I didn't treat, I would lose .37*25 = 9 hives. Going from 6 to 9 is a 50% increase in losses, but it's only a 12% decrease in survival. Comparing losses in percent is misleading. You have to compare both to the total number of hives.

If you lose 1 hive one year, and then 2 hives the next year, you have a 100% increase in losses, but if you have 100 hives, you've lost only 2% which by any reasonable measure is more than acceptable.
 
#14 ·
Here are most of them.

Sucrocide 10%
Fluvalinate 3%
Apiguard 10%
Cuomophos 3%
Formic Acid based 6%
Powdered sugar -2% (meaning more likely to die)
Drone removal -1%
SBB 2%
Small Cell -0.4%
MiteAThol 1%
Grease Patty 3%
Antibiotics 2%
Fumagillin -0.2%
Nosevet 0%
Small Hive Beetle trap 9%
Mineral Oil -0.5%

In an overall comparison of methods (losses)
No non-bee products 33.6%
Natural 35.6%
Prefer natural 33.1
Anything 35.7%
Other 30.8%

Many of these are within the margin of error meaning they don't show a significant difference.
 
#16 ·
Tried to take the survey, but no foreigners allowed. :(

As the focus in this thread seems to be focussing on losses for TF vs non TF, my own personal losses have skyrocketed since setting up some TF hives.
 
#17 ·
So I've been reading some of the survey results and admit to being somewhat disheartened by what I am reading. There really doesn't seem to be much difference between treating and not treating. (Argh. I was hoping for at least some CLUE as to which way to go on this!) About 27% die-off every winter. That's the only number that does seem to be improving. But WHY is it improving? I can't see anything there that even hints at the reason, or am I just not reading it right?

What I find disappointing is that with all the information in this thing, there is nothing about the bees themselves. I mean, USDA has introduced how many new resistant strains now, yet nobody seems to be measuring whether or not these new strains are having any impact. Don't we need to know that too? Shouldn't we be asking how many are using them and if they are having any success with them? Or did I somehow miss that part?

sigh. I was hoping to be able to use the survey to help guide me in some choices, but it doesn't seem to be working out that way.


Rusty
 
#18 ·
Well the results won't quite tell the whole story. The TF respondants would be a tiny proportion of the total number of hives reported on. TF beekeepers who are failing / have failed, would be less likely to respond. And the TF beekeepers who did respond mainly run small and often isolated, stationary apiaries, which contrast markedly to the stresses that commercial migratory hives are put under.

Among Tf beekeepers there are a few stars with good results, who will no doubt be happy to respond to the survey. However having read this forum going back several years I know that only 27% losses annually would be a pipe dream for many. Try dropping a tf yard of bees from say, Sol, into the middle of a large migratory commercial operation and see what's happened to those bees in another year. All things being equal I think you would have to say that treated bees will be more likely to survive. They definately are where I am.

Having said all that, is it important? Well, not so much. Somebody on the TF forum trying to tell a large commercial beekeeper that there is no point them treating because their losses will be the same anyway, is wasting their time. The commercial guy needs his bees to not just survive, but turn a profit. Here on the TF forum survival seems to be the only measure.

Conversely, those who are attempting TF should not be discouraged by losses provided they can make enough increase to be sustainable. My own view is if I go TF, I'm going to have losses. But I accept that as a cost of the experiment.
 
#19 ·
i guess i'm just lucky, there have been bees on my property for the last five winters and there have been zero winter losses.

2008 4 hives

2009 6 hives

2010 4 hives (two summer losses after beekeeper died, both absconds from shb/moth infestation)

2011 10 hives (no summer or winter losses)

2012 17 hives (two summer losses, one laying worker and one varroa), i know we are not to april yet, but it looks like all 17 are gonna make it. and if they do, it will be five consecutive winters with zero losses.

i do insulate the top and have vents up there, but that's about it.


sol, thanks for the link to beeinformed.org

i scoured that whole site after you first bumped the thread this fall, good stuff.

and i have signed up to participate in next year's survey.

for me, surveys are surveys, no more, no less.

when it comes to information that has some real meat on the bones, something i can readily use in my operation, i have gleaned more useful and practical information by the shared testimonials here on beesource. :)
 
#20 ·
I've had good luck with strictly treatment free apiaries yielding the sword of"resistant" stock for years now. However, I fall I to the category Oldtimer mentioned. I'm smaller scale, and non migratory. I hand pick "permanent" apiaries. Moving bees stresses the heck out of them. When you combine that with exposure to everything out there, I'm sure it takes it's toll. I don't rely on them for a living either. I've less to lose. I think it would be cool to have a commercial pollination operation that selected for treatment free survival. I know the USDA did something similar when they bred the Pol Line Italians Glenn distributed. I'm not sure what treatments if any were administered. I've utilized some of those genetics in my operation with very high survival rates.
 
#21 · (Edited)
So I've had a few hours to mull this over and I've come to a few conclusions. (How accurate they are is anybody's guess!)

It seems like however we choose to manage our hives--treat, don't treat, change out the foundation, use it forever, etc--the results are basically the same. So I coming away from this survey thinking that: 1. We should do whatever feels comfortable knowing that, statistically anyhow, nobody is getting any better results with their way than we are with ours. 2. The success or failure of a hive STILL depends mostly on the skill of the beekeeper in recognizing what is going on in the hive and around it, interpreting what that means to the hive, and being able to implement whatever the hive needs to survive both short term and long term. And 3. Our skill improves as we go along. The more we learn, the better we get and the more of our hives get to survive our education!

As always, JMO


Rusty
 
#28 ·
The same goes for treatments if you look at some of the previous data. Sure, unload some dough to 'save' all your hives, but your mortality rate might actually go down by like 5%, maybe 10% with the best ones. What this survey shows in very basic terms is that every year, a third of your hives are going to die on average.

Compensate.
 
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