"The survival and performance of 597 honey bee colonies in 20 apiaries 

across Europe."



That's about 30 hives per apiary!  That has to be stressful for the 

bees.  Tom Seeley points out that, given available suitable nesting 

sites, bees tend to space their colonies about half a mile apart.  

Gordon Cox, my first mentor, pointed out to me, back in about 1978, 

that he got no more honey from 10 hives on a site than when he had 5 

hives on the same site.  I can appreciate that commercial beekeepers 

have other things such as travelling time to take into account to 

ensure efficiency for their business rather than efficiency for the 

bees but overcrowding a site seems likely to reduce colony lifespan.



Chris









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