Randy wrote:
> What I find of interest is that (as Roger Morse used to point out) there is little under the Sun that has not already been tried by some beekeeper somewhere. 

Funny you should mention Roger. I was thinking about his book on Queen Rearing compared to Laidlaw and Eckert's. Roger carefully described one way of raising queen bees, his way. It is well written, concise and if followed will produce results. Laidlaw and Eckert seemed hell bent to describe *every* way of raising queens, which really gets into the principles involved and brings the message that there is no one right way.

In the end, though, it depends on what you are looking for. A method that is pretty nearly sure thing, -- or a deep understanding of what is going on, why somethings work sometimes and not at other times. For an initiation, the simple approach is obviously better, but for lifelong learners, which beekeepers tend to be, an armload of books won't be enough -- you have to try it all out. 

But back to the type of hive: my idea with a basic hive is to pretty much take that variable out of the equation. I am interested in being as aware as possible of what is happening to the bee population under my view, on a time scale, as the environment changes from week to week, and being able to respond quickly with what needs to be done. I like to try different things, but overall, little attention is paid by me to equipment, other than to have enough. 

If you have a bunch of different sorts of hives, it's hard to pin down whether what you are seeing is due to differences in colonies, strains of bees, or just the different hives. If all the hives are the same, then that source of variation is ruled out. If you are going to try something different, like wrapping or not wrapping, screened bottoms, or whatnot, it makes sense to do it to half and not to half. Then hope that the difference is significant enough to rise above the level of the noise.

But, yeah, no one right way.

PLB

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