Ted Wout wrote:
 
<snip>
<quote from Allen Dick>
>>Well, there are many reasons bees can become mean:
>...
>>* Shade -- too cool a location
 
> When it's cold I don't bother my hives.  I'm no authority on the matter
but has anyone out
>there got some logic for this?
 
Accepted wisdom in New Zealand, as I understand it,  is that in cold weather
the field bees tend to stay indoors (too much energy otherwise expended
staying warm outside?). As anyone who has shifted a hive to nearby knows,
field bees try to return to the old site (where an unpopulated hive is now
sitting). This is used to get rid of them while doing a hive check with
nondocile strains, to introduce a new queen to the younger, dociler nurse
bees, etc. And this is the point: on a fine, warm day the fiercer, older,
field bees are out foraging. Therefore, apart from the guards, the hive is
mainly populated by quiet, young nurse bees.
 
Apart from the docility variation in bee strains, Ted's ability to sit in
front of his hive (if he's not kin to St Francis of Assissi  :)   ) could
well be due to the workers being too busy to worry about someone who's not
irritating them.
 
 
>I literally sit in front of the hives in my backyard for at least fifteen
minutes a day.(this is how I relieve the stress of >my professional life)
 
Yeah! Great isn't it?
 
Philip Hinton
 
 
Palmerston North,
New Zealand.