Wonderful post Paul!  Re different methods for regional management, I'm
always curious as to which are the result of actual comparative testing,
and which merely due to "accepted practices."

To that end, I'd like to ask some questions re recent posts:

Charlie, Australian beekeepers largely went over to single deeps for brood
chambers a few decades ago.  But they also practice rotation of the 2nd and
3rd deeps to prevent plugging of the brood chamber.  Could you please
describe your management of your single brood chamber hives?  Am I correct
in assuming that you're running a queen excluder over the first deep?  How
do you manage the boxes above the excluder in order to minimize swarming?

Bob, re "provide upper entrance to vent moisture from hive."  This is a
widely-debated subject.  Upper ventilation creates a thermosiphon effect
that removes precious heat from the hive, so there is a trade off against
minimizing moisture condensation.  I'm curious as to whether the main
benefit of the upper entrance might actually be to encourage cleansing
flights.  My specific question then is, provided that the hive has heavy
insulation above, have you run, or do you know of any published trials,
that compared wintering in top-vented vs control unvented colonies?


--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

             ***********************************************
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