several Pete B snips followed by > my comment or question...
I speculated 15 years ago that small to medium colonies might be less suscetible to varroa induced collapse than the very large colonies we tend to prefer up north. I mentioned the concept to Prof. --- and he scoffed at it. Very large colonies will always be more healthy than small ones, he said.

>Well it sounds like the making of a good hypothesis and imho it sounds like a biological reasonable explanation. Natural tend to hate extremes.. too small or too large.  I am reminded of a article written by Charlie M. (perhaps 4 decades ago) about the maximum egg laying capacity of queens and how you really did not want those with very high laying capacity. Yet you would be foolish to think that some queen rearing folks do not choose queen mothers and drone mothers based largely on this one attribute... Often time man induced selection is hazardous and filled with future uncertainty.  

Tom Seeley has been actively promoting the idea of small hives (in one box or at most a deep and a medium) as an approach to ensure honey bee survival. Note: honey production is drastically reduced by this method.

>Some years ago when his comments came out about 'small' nest size some folks quickly leaped to the conclusion that he was endorsing 'small cell' bees.  I took it to mean they actively choose smaller nest cavities and maintained smaller population... 

the traditional way of beekeeping provides significantly better conditions for maintenance of bee health and their resistance to pathogens. -- Elmin Taric, & al (2019)

> I am not certain what 'traditional' means here Peter????? Traditional where and in what sense? It is interesting that Bee Culture just published an article on how minimum weight was the largest predictor of hive survival no matter what queen was in the box.  Study as far as I could tell was in Pennsylvania and many of the queens were evidently suppose to display some resistance to varroa.  As a casual observation a good number of novice beekeeper here that try to run no treatment bees and have large casualty loss (typically during the mid part of our typically mild winters), also tend to take off way more honey than they should for this location... Of course you can somewhat overcome this 'greed' by feeding back sugar water but sugar water is not honey. Although I run no treatment bees I tend to not demand too much from them and financially make up for the lower production with a larger price.

Gene in Central Texas..

 

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