I am a bit curious why Gerald Hayes didn't include a group with both a
lower entrance plus an upper entrance above the queen excluder? Seems
like a logical setup to give the bees a choice.
I believe the Imirie shim was designed for this.
I by no means conducted an experiment, but I put the imiire shim on a
couple of my hives to see what would happen. The bees chose to use the
bottom entrance and ignored the upper entrance almost completely.
Now on the other hand, on my 3 high 5 frame nucleus colonies with no
excluder, I use an upper entrance on the top box and bottom...which the
bees use both with reckless abandon.
The issue I run into with an upper entrance...after a honey flow and
entering even a brief dearth period, it opens the colony up to robbing.
Kevin McMahon
>
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html