Gauge invariance and lattice monopoles

The number and the location of monopoles in Lattice configurations depend on the choice of the gauge, in contrast to the obvious requirement that monopoles, as physical objects, have a gauge-invariant status. It is proved, starting from non-abelian Bianchi identities, that monopoles are indeed gauge-invariant: the technique used to detect them has instead an efficiency which depends on the choice of the abelian projection, in a known and well understood way.