" a little smoke is less disruptive than not smokeing them......" 

Exactly. We are not comparing smoking or not smoking a colony, but rather examining the colony with or without smoke. If you compare the effect of using or not using anesthetic on somebody and how it affect their job performance that day, it will be negative. But that isn't the comparison that matters: we want to look at the effect of pulling out his teeth with or without knocking him out.

When I worked as a state inspector we were instructed use smoke liberally to avoid stirring the bees up. I agree with this, there are a lot of good reasons to use smoke and very few good ones not to. The same goes for inspecting the hive. If somebody tells me they don't inspect their hives because they want to get maximum honey production, I say: you will lose a lot of honey production if the hive fails from something you could have prevented

Also, a hive that is opened often is less apt to be severely glued up, making manipulation far less disruptive. Any inspector will tell you it's easier to work on hives that are opened often than ones that are rarely opened. In the final analysis, your hives will benefit from frequent inspection because you will become more skillful at opening them without disturbing them. 

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