Its spring, so I've been too busy keeping bees to keep up with the
discussion. I'll pick up several gauntlets that have been tossed down, and
use them to knock some common sense into the arguments offered.
> In any case, I would like to see some concrete
> evidence that tracking hive weights over time
> produces anything more than data, of limited
> interest and even less usefulness. Bring it on.
One could start here with a basic primer:
http://articles.extension.org/pages/66978/nasa-honeybeenet-and-bee-informed-
measuring-change-saving-bees
http://tinyurl.com/hxu67bm
And the NASA Goddard page:
http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov
But the main practical utility to the working beekeeper has already been
clearly explained - major choices are turned from guesses into objective
data-driven events:
a) One can do trend line analysis, and see when feeding is going to be
required at current rates of consumption, something impossible when
"hefting" or "looking". It also allows proactive targeted feeding to be
done when a warmer day pops up, with a significant savings in labor and
feed, as only the colonies that need feed will be fed on that rare warmer
day.
b) One can also detect the FIRST nectar coming in the door and know for sure
that it is time to super, something that could only be otherwise discovered
by tediously pawing through each and every frame of each and every hive far
more frequently than anyone would prefer.
c) One can also quickly triage a yard and choose which colonies need to be
inspected, as it immediately identifies the outliers in a yard at BOTH the
high and the low end.
d) As one can collect data as often as one wishes, it provides much more
objective metrics about actual queen performance, so if one is selecting
queens from among one's own hives, or simply evaluating what one bought, it
allows one to know which queens are the best actual producers, even if the
larger colonies they lead tend to eat more during a dearth, and might seem
to not have a superior yield per hive to a less fecund/prolific queen. (It
could also warn one of when to harvest, as when a bloom ends, weight gains
cease, followed by weight losses as water is evaporated out of the honey,
followed by a slowing of the weight loss, which indicates that it is time to
go pull some supers. (While it is an "artisanal mono-floral honey" trick
that does not scale well to larger operations, one can even pull supers
BEFORE they are capped if one sees the weight loss level off, and verifies
with a refractometer. The bees cannot refill combs unless you extract them
and get them back on the hive ASAP. In VA, this was crucial, as one wanted
to pull supers, extract the Tulip Poplar, and simultaneously move the hives
while they were free of supers to Sourwood, whereupon the extracted supers
where returned to the hives.)
e) And one can even pay a teenager to gather the data to learn these very
basic and crucial things, as the process does NOT require one to disturb the
hive at all, and does not require someone with any skill or experience. So
gathering this data is far quicker and cheaper than a "yard inspection". It
can even be done after dark.
f) I also would offer that it allows one to stop depending upon a specific
"sentinel" hive to represent a yard, as outliers are easy to triage on each
pass through the yard at a rate of at least a minute a hive, but this is an
advantage that is unique to the Nectar Detector, so it does not apply to all
scales.
But you know all this - the demand for "concrete evidence" is merely more
obstreperous nay-saying about the advantages of objective metrics as a
planning tool. If you personally prefer a subjective gestalt impression on
a yard basis, rather than hard data from individual hives that's fine, but
don't pretend that a LACK of data is somehow more useful ! :)
ET Ash was far more eloquent about it, but the demand for "concrete
evidence" is a hand-waving attempt to dismiss evidence already offered
without providing any coherent reason why the evidence provided is not good
enough, or why it must be supplanted with evidence that is more "concrete".
It is a mere debating tactic, and not a very good one.
>> Bigger you get the more you quit records and manage yards.
This may be true for the medium-sized sideliner operations where a single
person has expanded his holdings to the point where he cannot manage them
properly alone, and has yet to hire the first employee, but profitability is
the difference between guessing about a yard, and being able to quickly tell
which hives in a yard need attention, and which are the actual sentinels
with useful information. The days of supering by the calendar are over,
kids. This spring has been no exception.
>>> Take your comments about late Goldenrod for example, how would scale
hives
>>> have changed the way those people managed those hives?
As he said "With a scale hive the daily gains/losses are obvious." With
those obvious numbers, one would be able to know when the nectar stopped
coming in, and THEN look at pulling supers and preparing colonies for
winter, rather than blindly following the extension agent calendar-driven
guess. It is a quintessential object lesson to prove the point that the
"days of supering by the calendar or by "sentinel plants" are over. I'll
quote Bob's entire comments below:
> The fields are yellow with it for miles around,
> but the scales show little or no weight gain until
> after Labour Day. Only late varieties seem to
> produce surplus nectar. My previous post claimed
> 120 pound gains per week in mid September.
> Ministry of Ag recommend pulling supers in August
> and starting treatments and feeding then. I know
> of several local beeks who followed this advice then
> finding smaller cluster in late Sept/ early Oct (CCD?).
> Once the brood box is packed, with no supers on
> into the trees they go! With a scale hive the daily
> gains/losses are obvious.
So 120 lbs per week gain, and by evaporating from a 90% water nectar to an
18% water honey, one loses 72% of the mass of the original nectar, so that
makes about 30 lbs of extra honey a week per hive, for the length of the
late goldenrod bloom. It would seem that weighing hives more than paid for
itself the first time he tried it! It matters not if that honey was sold,
or it was left on as winter feed for the bees, the profit is immediate,
tangible and only possible in a data-driven operation.
>>>> I don't think anyone could have predicted
>>>> that the steady above normal temps here
>>>> in March would bring out spring blossoms,
>>>> only to have record breaking cold temps
>>>> in the first week in April, killing the flowers.
Nope, no one could have, but this is not the first time that the scenario
has played out. Wayne's whole point in doing the HoneyBeeNet thing is to
gather data on a regional basis to measure how out-of-wack the whole bloom
vs pollinator maturation sequence has become. This matters more to
hatch-out of native species, but there is also significant impact on
honeybee colonies, as they simply cannot forage when they cannot fly, so
here in the City, we have mostly missed the fruit blooms due to low temps in
which the bees simply could not fly.
But when DO you super under such conditions? If you supered early, you
likely had the bees move up and start brood in the honey supers here in the
City. Out in the sticks, its been cold enough that supering by the calendar
might have chilled some significant brood, given all the extra entrances
drilled into so many supers, and the usual over-expansion of the broodnest
in a colony that is given drawn comb "far too early".
But it is ludicrous to demand "proof" that hard, objective, repeatable data
about each and every of one's hives will make a difference to the beekeeper.
Of course it will. But the beekeeper has to want to use that knowledge,
rather than heckle the very idea of having more knowledge about one's hives
on more than a gestalt basis.
Data does not replace the beekeeper, it merely allows his judgement to be
based upon objective metrics, rather than guesses. It allows him to focus
his efforts on the outliers, the colonies that need attention, and not waste
time on a colony that needs no attention. It allows more hives to be
properly managed in the same time.
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