> I am thinking that the key to pushing them to max brood production (....) has a lot to do with brood pheromone feedback levels?? Less brood in the colony = increased imperative to make more?


Not likely that simple because of the milieu of pheromones present during brood rearing and their, sometimes opposite, colony-level effects are very complicated. This study has lots to say on the subject and especially about E-β-ocimene.  E-β-ocimene and brood esters have an opposite effect on foraging and nurse bee behaivior.  

I pull brood on every colony that winters over to make nucs and manage swarms. I'm pulling brood with the split in mind so I usually pull both open and capped brood in more or less equal quantities.  I don't really pay that much attention to the donor's build after brood removal only that I've noticed the colonies never seem to miss a beat and are still good honey producers even when I go back in and pull brood a second time and maybe more.  If I'm stimulating brood rearing it's purely accidental except that I always provide the donor with drawn comb replacements.   

It might be an interesting experiment to target the age of brood and remove a specific cohort to create an imbalance in the colony's pheromone levels and see what happens to the build rate after that.  Of course one would need to still pay attention to timing. After the initial spring build everything can change.  


> E-β-Ocimene, a Volatile Brood Pheromone Involved in Social Regulation in the Honey Bee Colony (Apis mellifera)
> Alban Maisonnasse et al.

> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0013531

Bill Hesbach
Cheshire  CT

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