> >A failure to provide an upper entrance for ventilation is a recipe for
> >disaster...sooner or later.  (There must be a reason why feral colonies
> >almost always have their brood nest and honey storage area BELOW the
> >entrance.)
>
> I agree with the need for an upper entrance for
> ventilation/cleansing flights but have a question about the
> sentence in parenthesis above: is this a matter of bees'
> preference or the geometry of some feral housings?  I have seen
> feral colonies build down from the entrance if the entrance was
> at the 'ceiling' of the chamber.  When hiving packages/swarms,
> they always start at the top.

Maybe feral colonies usually build down from the opening is because
when an natural opening occurs in a tree truck, the moisture entering the
opening mostly seeps down causing the truck to decay down faster
than decay up. Thus only when the bees need more room do they remove
the denser incipient decay above the opening?

Bob

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