" Being somewhat of a minimalist"

I do not own a scale.  Nor do I see why I should own a scale.  Not that there is a thing wrong with weights and if someone likes to plot data you sure can pin down when harvests are taking place and what nectar source really produces excess and learn all kinds of day to day details that are mainly just noise in the data unless you are doing some kind of serious science study in my opinion.  In March I look in every hive to make sure there is a laying queen and the last couple of years add a strip of apivar.  I try to look in every hive at least once a month real quick during the summer.  It only takes a few minutes per hive to open, pull enough frames to get a good look at one or two frames of brood and make sure the pattern is good and there is no sign of disease.  Two or three times a summer I do alcohol washes on at least a few hives to make sure mites are under control and most or all hives are washed in early Sept. At the same time I see stored honey.  You know how much, give or take, each box you pull weighs when you lift it and how many honey frames are around the brood.  If you are a bee keeper those kinds of activities are minimal in my opinion.  If you do much less you are a bee haver, not a bee keeper.  If you do such a minimal check you are going to know if a hive needs feeding.  If you are afraid of your bees and hate opening a hive why do you have them?  Now, what would really be useful would be an antigravity gismo you can lay on top of the box with one hand that would lift those boxes for me. Put a load cell in it and get the weight automatically. Bar code the boxes so the antigrav unit reads the bar code and knows the tare weight on that box.   If the price was right I could get into such a tool.  Or how about a thermostatically controlled electric blower on my smoker?  I too often get so involved looking at the bees I forget to pump the bellows and the smoker is often nearly out when I next need it.

When I do inspections I do not particularly hurry.  I suppose I generally take between five and ten minutes per hive for routine look sees.  If you were commercial that is probably too much time.  I am too lazy to hurry up and get out fast.  My bees are supposed to be relaxation, not hard work.  I spend way more time sitting on an inverted bucket just watching them than anything else.  I do some of that most days simply because I find them fascinating to watch.  During that watch time I can see crawlers on the ground that tell me if I have a mite problem before I do a wash or see a hive that is not flying like the rest that says something is wrong.  

Dick

" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html