BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 19 Nov 2018 18:21:03 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (16 lines)
> Reversing is also out because I do not want heavy lifting. I do have mentees who help me but I never reverse so why start now.

Hi Bill
I understand, of course. But since we are on this topic, others may be interested in an extended discussion. On the theme of heavy lifting, I was shown a trick back in the 1970s by the San Diego County bee inspector. If you encounter a heavy hive, you can slowly lay the thing on its "back" and separate the boxes. This gives you access to the brood and if done properly, is less disruptive than pulling the supers off one at a time. If one was planning to reverse, the heavy supers just have to be tugged around and set on the bottom, with the lighter boxes above. 

As far is reversing goes, pretty much I agree. In fact, in California the bottom boards were always nailed to the bottom box, so reversing was pretty much out of the question. In any case, no one did it and hardly anyone had even heard of it. But the thread was also about how to get honey supers emptied out. This is often a problem if there is a lot of winter kill, where the hives have most of the honey still in them, and no bees. When I worked at the bee lab, we often had 50 to 100 deeps of honey. Usually we ordered packages to restock and I would put 5 full frames of honey with each. 

One year we tried putting supers of honey under full sized colonies to get the honey cleared out of them. I don't really know what percentage emptied them out, some did and some didn't. Anyway, we got them out of the warehouse. I suppose the honey supers could be set out in the yards and robbed by bees. I am superstitious about getting robbing started, but I imagine it could be done under certain circumstances. Say, if the stacks were bee tight except for a tiny opening. But robber bees also tear the combs up quite a bit, so as a technique, it seems a bit daft to me. 

PLB 

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

ATOM RSS1 RSS2