> > If one scrapes the top and bottom bars too much and has too much bee space
> > between the boxes, the queens are inhibited from going down by the gap.
>
> OK, so what's "too much"?

Well, if the bees had their way, there would be one big comb from top to bottom
with no gaps, especially no gaps with nice neat wide scraped wooden bars above
and below them, and especially no gaps without handy ladders for an old lady to
go up and down on.

> But I do scrape the top bars, mainly because I hate to squish the bees if I
> don't scrape.  IYHO, am I scraping too much?  Wastin' my time?  Don't worry,
> the few that get squashed are expendable?

Well, when we put a box down, sometimes the frames jump up a bit <g>.  And, yes,
we do squash some bees, but I don't know a beekeeper who does not squash some.

The beekeepers who are the most 'holier than thou', and most adamant about bee
space and scraping (I used to be one before I saw the light)are the ones that
are into their hives every day or every week, scraping, tinkering, undoing the
bees' hard work.  They need boxes that come apart and go together perfectly,
because they open their hives more often than their car trunk. They probably
kill a lot more bees than I do, because I don't stack and unstack the boxes more
than about four or five times a year.

I was writing about "How to Keep Bees and Sell Honey" on s.a.b, the other day
and recall that one of the most charming things about the book is the picture
inside the cover of some old timer proudly showing his hive full of bees.  And
you do know it is *full* of bees, because you can see squashed bees sticking out
between the supers that are stacked up -- as  recall-- to well above his head.
It was sad to see the poor bees, but funny and nice too, and one of my favourite
pictures, because it was obviously very real, not like that beehive ventilator
ad with the pretty lady in the perfect white suit beside a perfect new hive.

No, I do not advocate squashing, but it's one way of killing mites <g> that is
not illegal anywhere and doesn't discriminate against the poor drones.   Frankly
I hate killing anything, but I also don't like a sterile over scraped hive,
because I know my bees don't like it and it's their home.

You've seen our hives, and you've seen our bees.  They're on my web pages and
it's pretty obvious that some of them have bee space in name only.  I like about
3/8" to 1/2" stools on the top bars for the way we are doing things.

allen