I listen to the speaker speak about Dr. Jeffery and his 14 hives in a single apiary. In each hive there were brood breaks of 8 weeks, sept thru October one year whereas the following year was dec thru Jan.
Actually that is not what the data showed. The hives were quite variable with less than half of them(6 the first year) exhibiting what you describe. Seven of them the first year had either no brood break or one month. The following year data collection did not begin until november and again 6 of the 14 had lengthy (8 week) broodless periods. The only consistent aspect was that all or nearly all hives did have brood stops at some point but not necessarily continues gaps or breaks. These studies were done by actual hive inspections throughout the winter period in which the criteria was weather warm enough for the bees to be flying. So one could question whether this study was done under truly cold weather conditions.
The speaker chose not to focus on Dr. Jeffery?s work rather he focuses on another study by another individual in which there were few brood breaks.
Actually it is Dr Jeffree and I understand your confusion because the speaker misspoke during the presentation and actually the data you are referring to (14 hives, single apiary, two seasons) was done by Bernard Mobus during the mid 1970s. Dr Jeffree's work was from the 1950s. At any rate the speaker spent approximately 6 min of a 43 min talk including Q&A discussing this study out of the 9 studies he talks about. He also presents tables of the raw data from each season of the study. The last claim you can legitimately make is that he chose not to focus on this work.
The above methods are not science. We must look at the data, all the data, even data that does not support our bias unless one can {q} test the data out of range which was not the case.
I can make no sense of these statements. You want to Q test a review of literature? And you want to look at all the data like viewing the first 10 minutes of a presentation and then stopping when you think what has been said up to that point confirms what you believe to be true?
Eight {8} weeks is substantial brood break to me and this is what I see in my apiary. I?ll stick with Dr. Jeff and agree with his studies. They are spot on.
This is what we refer to as confirmation bias.
Also the study was done not in the US but some other country, the speaker did not say which country in the first half I listened to so maybe a semi tropical climate as far as I know.
What study was not done in the US? Are we only allowed to discuss US based studies? The speaker made no mention of sub-tropical studies. You simply pulled that from your biased point of view. The outdoor studies he mentions were conducted in Scotland (the one you love so much) the U.S (guess that is a good one then) and Canada (is that cold enough). Other studies he did not specify their location but since they were conducted under climate controlled conditions is doesn't seem relevant.
And speaking of sub tropical, are Arkansas winters really a good test for what is being discussed? One of the reasons this kind of data is interesting to northern beekeepers where it is impossible to open hives for several months at a time is that we are dealing with a black box situation. You will hear beekeepers talking about what is going on in the hives in winter but we really know very little where it is too cold to open them. In the Canadian study mentioned they killed hives each month throughout the winter to find out what was going on. They found brood ever month during a Canadian winter.
As soon as I realized he focused on preferred data and not actual data, I quit listening. Maybe his summary was without bias. Did you listen to the entire lecture?
Yes I listened to the entire lecture. I think you have admirably demonstrated where the bias is.
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