>
> >Maximum honey production IS obtained by maximum hive population.
>

As a general rule, maximum hive population is indeed correlated with honey
production.  Hence beekeepers who use tricks such as double queen hives to
maximize the population.  And for those of us who sell bees for a living,
we are well aware that one trades off the sale of bees against maximum
honey production.

But it is a bit more complicated than population alone.  All other things
being equal, a colony with a larger population will tend to produce more
honey, due not only to having more foragers and mid-age honey processors,
but also since the larger the colony, the greater the proportion of bees
freed from the responsibilities of brood maintenance and cluster
thermoregulation.

But without a source of nectar, a strong hive cannot produce honey.  That
is a location and weather effect.
Another effect is latitude, since the further from the equator, the greater
the number of daylight flight hours during the summer honeyflow.

Along with population, another major factor is the composition of that
population.  In the same location, some equally strong hives will produce
more honey than others.  A colony's performance is largely due to the
composition of the team of patrilines of workers sired by the various
drones who mated with the queen.

And a colony infected with nosema or virus will not produce much honey,
since the longevity of the workers is reduced.

Something that surprises me is that in my area, I find that yards of hives
only a half mile apart can display huge differences in honey production,
despite the fact that the flight ranges of those two hives greatly overlap.

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

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