Kirk:

>My point is, behavior is not consistant. Who knows....weather, nectar 
>coming in or not, the way I held my face, the moon phase?

We score colonies for (amongst other things) stinging, following and 
quietness on the comb; we do this for every visit and it is fascinating to 
see the variation through the lifetime of a queen and although sometimes the 
reason for a variation in temper may be clear - perhaps the weather or the 
end of a flow - at other times there seems to be no good reason why a colony 
that had always been good suddenly displays a bit of bad temper.  I believe 
that it is probably due multiple mating and we are seeing the influence of 
perhaps one particular 'bad' drone.

>I usually start with phase one: remove the cover slowly without smoke. 
>Phase two: wave my hand without smoke over the top of the hive.

Just what we do.  We rarely use smoke these days, so waving your hand fairly 
rapidly just above the top bars soon tells you about the colony's temper.

Best wishes

Peter
52.194546, -1.673618 

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

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm