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Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:07 Jan 2019, 17:31
by NigelP
AdamD wrote:
07 Jan 2019, 16:42
Is it easier/better to have one brood box and two supers of honey at the end of the season or two brood boxes and 4 supers of honey?
The science that has been done on colony size and honey collection suggests it is definitely not linear
It goes something along the lines below,
1 brood box full of bees gets you 2 supers of honey.
2 brood boxes full of bees gets you 6 supers of honey.
Works out at less inspection time per brood box/honey super, but more time in the extracting room.
Sorry to play the pedant here ;)
If you need the original paper I have it somewhere...it was pretty convincing.

If we already have varroa tolerant bees then why aren't people beating a path to get hold of the queens ?
And why is so much scientific research and breeding currently ongoing on to try and establish Varroa Sensitive Hygienic bees?
Someone is kidding themselves.

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:07 Jan 2019, 18:20
by Jim Norfolk
Since Nigel has brought up the subject of hygienic bees, anyone know what became of the LASI bees. They were selling hygienic queens in 2016 and 2017 on their website. Did anyone buy one and what was the outcome?

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:07 Jan 2019, 18:57
by NigelP
They exhibited hygienic behaviour not varroa sensitive hygienic behaviour. The few I heard about were unimpressive, similar mite counts to other hives in the same apiary , small colony sizes and relatively aggressive. But I only know of a few people who bought them.
They then got EFB.... :roll:
nuff said.

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:09 Jan 2019, 19:44
by AdamD
NigelP wrote:
07 Jan 2019, 17:31
AdamD wrote:
07 Jan 2019, 16:42
Is it easier/better to have one brood box and two supers of honey at the end of the season or two brood boxes and 4 supers of honey?
The science that has been done on colony size and honey collection suggests it is definitely not linear
It goes something along the lines below,
1 brood box full of bees gets you 2 supers of honey.
2 brood boxes full of bees gets you 6 supers of honey.
Works out at less inspection time per brood box/honey super, but more time in the extracting room.
Sorry to play the pedant here ;)
If you need the original paper I have it somewhere...it was pretty convincing.
Your assessment is probably about right from my experience and I recall reading something in Ruttner or Yeates - can't remember which - that larger colonies are more 'efficient' and produce a larger surplus. I also recall that Bro Adam suggested that one BIG brood box resulted in the bees producing more honey than bees spread across two, although I am not convinced that this should necessarily be the case as it may depend on whether there is some congestion and reduction in laying before the queen decides to make her way to the second box.
I rekon that many beekeepers would be happy with a couple of single brood box hives producing a couple of supers of honey in most years. (And certainly a lot better then Golf!)

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:09 Jan 2019, 23:35
by Patrick
It does make sense particularly when you consider that a colony needs to collect a surprising amount of nectar and pollen simply to maintain and grow the colony itself for much of the season, before it can then start to accumulate and store a significant surplus for later.

In my area there are relatively short and defined periods within the foraging season when there is enough forage for bees to collect nectar over and above what they need to maintain themselves. My bees are probably able to find something to forage between say April and early October (if they can find Himalayan Balsam), say roughly 6 months or less active flying weather. In that period they only have probably two distinct windows of maybe three weeks each when if the weather and soil moisture are favourable and they can really pile in a surplus over colony maintenance. So in that scenario only larger colonies can really make hay by putting lots of workers on foraging duties, smaller colonies simply cannot capitalise on such short periods to the same extent and may respond by rearing more brood which by the time they are foraging age the boom times may have ended.

Having said that, building larger colonies and keeping them that way for a prolonged period is not without its challenges either and pointless if your hives are static and the area you are in simply cannot sustain them over the whole season - its all horses for courses and working with what forage is available to you in your area, not just following an abstract theory.

I was fishing Chesil beach this evening and conditions were far from ideal. I could have stuck out with big baits for fish that might have been present but probably were not, or do as I actually did, which was to fish with small baits for fish that were actually there. As a consequence I had a good evening of catching (and returning) plenty of small stuff rather than watching a motionless rod top in the dark for the small likelihood something big might just turn up.

Again, working with what you have actually got around you rather than what you might wish you had. Very Zen, me.. :)

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:11 Jan 2019, 17:29
by Jim Norfolk
Can we actually decide how large a colony we want to have? I would have thought this would be determined by race of bee as well as available forage and foraging time. It is said (nor sure by whom) that the native British bee produced a small colony hence our small brood boxes, while the Italian bees produced larger colonies hence the larger Langstroth and Dadant boxes in the US. We now have hybrid bees through most of the country and mostly they need a bigger box. I started out with 10 frame WBCs and tried 14 x 12 which I found my bees could fill. I found the 14 x 12 too cumbersome and so I then started looking for clues that they need more brood space and either went for brood and a half or double brood. I noticed earlier that Adam had one colony on triple brood this year. So maybe optimum brood box volume is determined by forage availability and we just need to be attuned to it.

I wonder how natural beekeepers decide how much brood space to provide. One way might be to make brood space virually unlimited by not using queen excluders and just keep adding more boxes of foundation, presumably by having a look inside.

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:11 Jan 2019, 18:14
by nealh
My bees are hybrids influenced most likely by Paynes buckfast X's which appear to be spread all about. My queens vary from dark brown to a slightly paler shade.

Having tried coms, 14 x12 & even a basterdised 14 x 10, I am now on National B & H and a brood /demeree during peak season to give laying room (ir required) surprisingly over wintered colonies are on 5 or 6 seams.

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:12 Jan 2019, 10:08
by AdamD
My selection has been to produce a decent amount of honey per hive - which seems to have resulted in large colonies - although one this year did very well with one brood box and about 8 frames of brood all summer. The triple brood box colony was only made so as I was going on holiday and was concerned about swarming and with 20 frames of brood, they might have wanted more space. As it happens they didn't increase the brood area at all after that. However they did draw comb at the side of the (third) bottom box where a frame should have been -as they always do if you are one frame short!

I am comfortable with using two brood boxes and I am tending to not inspect the bottom box for swarm cells during mid-season; partially as the bees don't swarm too readily and also because any swarm cells are very often on the bottom of the super-frame bottom bars that's put in for drone comb so they can be identified easily enough.

I have tried 14 x 12 brood boxes and didn't really like them. I tried a Commercial for one year too which started off OK and overwintered fine but the queen started going off colour and she was superceded during the season so that attempt at a Commercial was a wash-out. Maybe I will try again. I DO like to long lugs of the BS frames, I have to say!

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:22 Jan 2019, 14:00
by Fishman
I keep bait hives to catch off and my finding are more or less the same the bees do fine by themselves and it is true that whilst there is animal husbandry involved in the mass management of insects. You wouldn't keep an animal in conditions in which it fails to thrive. I would take that as bees need to allowed to adapt to an environment so that they can thrive, the over reliance in treatment regimes and management is holding adaption back by limiting selective pressure. I understand that commercial interests are very powerful and always have been in farming but how that has become entrenched so readily in hobbyist bee keepers I find really strange. I you live near a feral bee colony like I do then you like will be able to attest to the fact they don't die out every year and are recolonized, although this no doubt does happen.

Re: Natural beekeeping

PostPosted:22 Jan 2019, 15:11
by Jim Norfolk
Well worth a look at Tom Seeley's lecture on Honey Bees in the Wild on the National Honey Show website. His Arnot Forest bees must be the best studied feral bees in the world. Descendants of immigrant bees of diverse origins, they live with Varroa by several mechanisms, they bite the legs off Varroa, they show hygienic behaviour, removing infested pupae and they build small colonies and swarm often. Apparantly none of these is sufficient on its own, which explains why commercial beekeepers still treat for mites. Small colonies and frequent swarming are not suited to large scale production. Maybe the feral bees will eventually adapt sufficiently to Varroa for non treatment techniques to be viable in commercial operations.

I expect this is a common theme in many areas of agriculture/animal husbandry. The traditional varieties could be raised with minimal or no treatment and modest yields but commercial pressures and the need to feed ever increasing billions of people on a dwindling area, raised the intensity and highly selected strains with prophylactic treatments have become the norm. None of which is sustainable long term.