Murray said:
Correct of course that management is a lot easier in a yard of hives
where they are of broadly equal power.
However..... I would just love them to be all of THAT size, and just going
into a major flow. Doesn't ever happen of course (at least over here in
Scotland), but we can still dream.

The reason *in my opinion* is in the way you manipulate your bees and
possibly lack of labor needed to do the kind of kind manipulation we follow.

 In the circles I travel in we all work our bees in the same manner. Very
labor intensive. We have no trouble keeping a few hundred to 50,000 all in
two deep hive bodies , a deep and a half or similar config. YEAR AROUND.

Without a complete teardown of each hive at times the process would not
work. We are always amused when U.S. migratory beekeepers tour other
countries and see apiaries with a yard of say 40 hives and each hive has a
different assortment of size *brood nest* boxes.

The methods we use are known to us and have been put in print in both ABJ
and Bee Culture. I have alluded to these methods on BEE-L.

I agree that many hobby beekeepers shudder at the thought of the complete
teardown of a hive which we do each spring( and possibly other times) in
order to keep bees within a system of boxes.

Keeping bees in five deep *brood nest* boxes in my opinion has amateur
beekeeper wrote all over it. Why dig through five *brood nest *boxes to find
the queen, check for disease etc. I do not see a problem with five Illinois
depth *brood nest boxes* as Dr. Farrar used BUT I know of no commercial
beekeeper using such a system. .

If the bees need space to cluster add supers. Many hobby beekeepers do keep
hives in 3-6 deep boxes which fall over, blow over and are a big pain to
move by hand if the need arises.

The big difference in my opinion between the beekeeper non migratory and
migratory is the beekeeper which moves bees has a strict system he follows.

One man and a forklift can load the average semi load of 450-500 hives in
two hours (when in uniform boxes).

When I kept bees in Florida the queens kept about five frames of brood most
of the year. We had to stimulate the hive by feeding to get the hive to
build big populations. Why would you want to keep the hive in five deep
boxes?
Exception to rule:
I see no reason to keep bees in five deep  bodies throughout the year unless
you harvest honey from the brood nest as Dee Lusby does because she uses no
chemicals and is non migratory.

When a beekeeper which has his hives in many different size boxes wishes to
sell his hives he usually gets less of a price due to the fact the migratory
beekeeper has to go through and get all the hives uniform. We pay bottom
dollar and a big stack of  tops, bottoms, inner covers and odd boxes  left
when we leave. All most migratory beekeepers buy is equipment they can use.
I say the above because if you keep around a hundred hives in the U.S. and
need to sell your hives in a hurry the migratory beekeeper usually will be
the buyer of your bees.

The idea of BEE-L is to learn. Many hobby beekeepers reading the above might
have trouble understanding the above but those U.S larger and migratory will
be nodding their heads in approval of what I have written.

Bob

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