> I could find nothing to support the idea that restricting brood rearing
in honey bee colonies is beneficial in any respect,
but if there is evidentiary proof, bring it on.

In recent years I"ve experimented to see what would happen if I confined
the queen, by the use of queen-excluder insert dividers, to a
small number of frames.  I've done this to see about prolonging the life
of breeder queens.
A colony can just exist with the queen confined to a single frame.
But even when she's given 3 or 4 frames to lay in, the colony remains small.
As far as I can tell, so long as the queen continues to lay eggs, I've
not noticed the bees attempting to supersede her.

Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
530 277 4450
ScientificBeekeeping.com

             ***********************************************
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