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Date: | Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:52:15 EST |
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I'd like to test one of these units. It seems that the design is based on
the concepts that mites use gravity/cell orientation to choose where to
lay their eggs, and that swarm cells don't develop due to changes in
orientation.
The latter is the reason I asked about brood survival rates - if you've
ever picked caps off of older pupae, you'll see that ALL of the pupae are
oriented in the same direction.
So, if these are developing properly, despite the rotation, then I see no
reason why Queen cells would be a special case. They are usually already
rotated 90 degrees from the normal cell position - which in itself implies
orientation isn't particularly important.
What I can't find is any data from trials indicating whether either of
these notions are true. Might be, might not be, no reason to not keep an open
mind until one sees test results. If it works, its still probably too
complicated and expensive for commercial beekeepers, but it might find a niche
market with smaller scale beekeepers.
Someone must have been confident that this works and that there is a market
- it is not cheap to scale up to commercialization. Note that the first
reports show pictures of round wooden brood frames, whereas the distributor
shows plastic frames and even plastic beehives. On the other hand, its not
uncommon to see ideas presented in the mode of - if I imagine it, it must
be true.
The URL's indicate that this came out of some Hungarian research - implying
that there was some R&D behind these notions. Sure would like to see the
papers.
I'm still fascinated by the pictures of the brood nests and honey rings.
Just shows once again how flexible bee behavior is - obviously brood frames
don't rotate in nature. Nor do trees get up and move. Yet, we move hives
all the time and the bees cope.
Jerry
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