> James, what seems apocryphal in Storchs book?

Please don't get me wrong - I like this approach very much, as I was lucky
enough to stumble across it among the first beekeeping books I ever bought.
I found my copy in a used bookstore in Munich, so I scribbled notes in the
margins, as I am far less fluent in German than I'd like to be.

But I do have good reason to suspect that some of Storchs' conclusions are
not based on actual observations, but were instead, "inferred", "reasoned",
or even fantasized. As such, a pinch of salt is required with this book.
But this is still far less salt than the 50-lb bag of salt required for so
many beekeeping books!   

Aaron's finding the English translation online allows me to easily cut and
paste a single randomly-selected example where I don't buy the explanations,
in either language.  My comments are in square brackets.

From page 40 in the online English translation:

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Badly disturbed colonies gradually cease all activity..."

[Seriously?  ALL activity? I've never ever seen this, in decades of looking
at 700+ colonies for much of that time.  Has anyone seen this cessation?  Is
it really complete and total?  How long does it last?]

"...This is always the case when one works in the brood nest. (removal of
brood frames, larvae for rearing, queen cells, etc...). The young bees stop
their many activities such as feeding the open brood, fanning, keeping
guard, etc... The foragers returning with pollen run anxiously on the
combs..."

[Fanning?  They stop fanning?  That would mean that hive temps might spike
to dangerous levels for brood after an inspection!  What possible
disturbance would make the bees neglect their brood?  I can't imagine the
like!  And as for FEEDING the brood, the same concerns arise, only doubly
so.  Not buying either of these.]

[Keeping guard?  They STOP keeping guard?  Really?  OK, maybe they briefly
stop keeping guard to come around back of the hive and sting the beekeeper,
but I have this whole theory of the "Kamikaze Bee" to explain why I don't
put my veil up unless I am forced to, as one can hear the high-pitched (A to
A-sharp above middle C) whine of a solo bee that will fly straight into your
forehead, to head-butt you, leave some alarm pheromone, and give you fair
warning that if you don't go away, the NEXT bee will sting you, and this
sequence of events falls apart unless there are guards on duty to perform
this non-lethal defense in the sort of timing sequence that one can easily
experience it if one pays attention.]

[And "running on the combs"?  I start to worry about a queenless hive when I
see running on the combs, but maybe I've been spoiled by Sue Cobey's NWCs
for too long, and Storch is speaking of A.m.m. (those little black bees that
seem as mean as AHB sometimes - fair warning to beekeepers on European
vacations)]

"...many bees visit the honey cells to fill their crops..."

[Nooooo!  Don't get people started on the whole "bees fill their honey
crops" thingy, as this perpetuates the fairy tale about "smoker smoke making
the bees think that there is a fire, so they prepare to abscond" when never
in the history of bees has a hive abandoned brood and hive due to a fire!
Even Disney got that much right in the Bambi fire scene, and that was a
cartoon!]

"...The queen loses interest stops egg laying..."

[OK, yes, some queens run and hide for a bit, we've all seen that...]

"...and the bees stop feeding her..."

[Uh, yeah... she's RUNNING AWAY - what did you expect?  The retinue is lucky
to be able to keep up with her.]

"...Several hours pass before the colony resumes its normal activity..."

[Hours?  Really?  I don't think so.  Maybe the beekeeper can make such a
mess that SOME house bees will spend a long time doing repair work to
broken-open comb or renewing broken propolis seals, but flight ops return to
normal pretty quickly, from what I see "at the hive entrance".]

"If this happens on a day of nectar flow, these disturbances cause, as we
have already mentioned elsewhere, the loss of many hundreds of grams of
nectar...."

[Now wait a second there - how is my opening the hive going to reduce the
foraging of bees that are OUT FORAGING??? 
And think about the whole hormone/job function thing, and tell me what a
forager is going to do about a "disturbed" hive - they are not about to
regress back to being a house bee, and go fix up some mangled comb, now are
they?  No, foragers only forage, and they wouldn't even think to do the
dishes or pick up a broom as long as there were house bees alive to handle
the housekeeping.]

[If there is disturbance in the hive, will this actually increase subsequent
forager offloading time?  I've not seen it, and I've been pretty brutal with
some ob hives to address this specific question, as "number of forager trips
per day" matters in the apple pollination business, as some orchards get
only 3 decent flying days in an entire week of bloom, and I took my
pollination fees in the form of a percentage of the crop value, so really
wanted to get the job done. Sometimes it seemed that the best weather days
were the days selected for moving the bees in.]

"...Beekeepers who fiddle in their colonies, often without good reason,
should always keep these considerations in mind...."

[Now he is well into "preaching bullshit".  I've heard similar "reasoning"
from those who presume to "teach" novices that such disturbances are very
very bad, and thereby give the novice an easy excuse for not opening his/her
hive at every opportunity to both learn, and to develop style and panache in
manipulating a hive, the Tai-Chi of beekeeping.   I had to run separate cult
deprogramming and remedial-instruction classes for the victims of these
charlatans, as they were so brainwashed and soaked in patchouli oil, they
would offer arguments like this one, and distract the entire class.
Seriously, I've not seen a whole lot of difference in crops between hives
that were "inspected" on each and every Saturday by nervous novices, and
hives one block away, on a roof that no one except I ever even visited.]

"...Certain manipulations such as removing the building frames, adding
frames or working without touching the nest, are not considered great
disturbances which can cause bad results."

[So, inspecting one magical mystical frame is somehow not a problem for the
bees? (Peter correctly observed in the "At The Hive Entrance" thread that
such a "sentinel frame" or "building frame" is very likely to be almost
useless for its intended purpose if it is positioned at the far side of a
box of combs, as suggested by Storch), but it is a very useful tool for
beekeepers who look at their hives more often than is commercially viable.]

[And ADDING frames isn't a problem either?  Adding them where?  And what
"work" does one do without touching the nest?  Weed-eating the yard?  Oh
Lordy, how bees hate weed-eaters!  What bunkum this fellow writes at times!]

But don't get me wrong -  I REALLY LIKE THIS BOOK.  It teaches observation
skills, and it starts one down the path of "paying attention to the bees"
and "letting the bees tell you what they need".  In my view, it is to
beekeeping what John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" was to jazz.  I just am not
buying some of what is said in the analysis, for reasons like the ones above
given for this single example.  

And to address the inevitable grumbling that I should try and write my own
"perfect" book if I am so upset at such inaccuracies in other books, I will
say it again -

"Writing books about beekeeping is like dancing about architecture!"

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