'Dennis Van Englesdorp stated that hot hives do, in fact, produce more
honey. His theory...'
I agree with Peter. I've seen all types of hives, including fully
africanized in US and in S. America. I've also known lots of beekeepers who like
hot hives.
I liken this to the dairy cows I grew up around. There were the pets,
that wanted nothing more than have their heads scratched, and then there were
the one's my father called 'knotheads', who every so often tried to kill
you, and anything, including their own shadow, set them off.
Overall, the gentle ones took what came, stayed the course in milk
production. The freaky ones were up and down all the time.
I see much the same in bee colonies. I have seen bees that are so docile,
they'll put up with almost anything, and some of these were a bit on the
lazy side. On the other hand, the ones that are in continual attack mode
are easily distracted from the job of making honey, and our bee counters that
we ran for years on 50 hives in MD showed that once agitated, they stayed
that way for days, and it adversely affected foraging rates.
I've no real evidence that temperament is correlated with honey
production. Like Peter, I've seen docile ones and I've seen mean ones that produce
well, as well as those that don't. But overall, I cant' say that mean
colonies are more productive, and my experience and a bit of data suggest that
overly mean colonies are too focused on protecting the hive, sometimes at
the cost of production.
I can say, if you want more production, just turn your hives so the
entrances face the sun in the morning.
Peter also comment on the myth that african bees produce more honey per
colony than Europeans. My opinion on this is that the African bees, when
first setting up housekeeping, are good at finding scarce resources. But,
once things are going well, they back off production - they don't seem to be as
driven to build large stores. For a bee that readily swarms when
conditions turn a bit unfavorable, this has an advantage. Our European bees
mostly had to survive long winters, have enough food to do so. African bees
were more likely to have to deal with protracted drought, that could go on for
years. Like everything else in those areas, it was useful to be able to
pack up and move on - no need for large food stores - can't store enough to
wait out the drought.
That's my take - probably more opinion than any research.
Jerry
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