Re: Nosema sampling and testing

From: Allen
Date: 3/15/98
Time: 1:26:45 AM
Remote Name: 198.161.229.184

Comments

<<<I've always been satisfied with the consistency of my nosema testing>>>

I guess the thing here is that for most purposes, it does not too much matter how consistent the results are.

If you are a beekeeper and you find you have measurable nosema, you likely treat. Most people do not check back carefully to see how well the treatment worked. Most just assume that it did something and, besides, the season has progressed, and who can really tell... and what can one do at that late stage anyhow?

The thing that is different about what we are trying to do here is that we are out to prove something, and to do so, we have to have a high level of confidence in our measurements and measure often and accurately. If we don't, what is the point of comparing before and after and trying to pick out trends arrive at conclusions? We need a good signal to noise ratio to be able to judge.

So,what is a good level of confidence for a competet commercial beekeeper trying to protect his bees is not good enough for a scientist trying to show accurately the effects of various subtley different treatments.

That is the problem that hit us right off. We found wide variations. Now we have to decide how much variation between two samples that seemingly should be identical can be tolerated without falling below the noise -- and credibility -- threshold,

Allen