On Mon, 2008-12-08 at 19:35 -0500, Peter L Borst wrote:
> My question is what would be the effect of keeping hives in two or three
> stories, encouraging swarming, and harvesting only small amounts of honey if
> it is really "in the way".

I recently acquired a hive that had been abandoned by the beekeeper
about five years previously. The hives had been managed until the
beekeeper, apparently, lost interest. The woodenware had fallen into
disrepair. One of the two original colonies had died out. The property
owner wanted the bees maintained to continue pollinating his apple
orchard.

The remaining colony was thriving. The hive was made of two deeps, a
queen excluder and two shallow supers. The bees appear smaller than my
other managed hives, I assume due to older comb. The hive was heavily
propolized to compensate for the degrading woodenware.

While a single colony is the farthest thing in the world from
conclusive, it does make me think that there may be a viable solution to
mite problems, that breeding better bees instead of making better
treatments may be the way to go.

*******************************************************
* Search the BEE-L archives at:                       *
* http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?S1=bee-l *
*******************************************************