At 09:32 AM 5/22/98 -0600, Allen Dick wrote:
Hi Allen, and Bee Friends,
>> Upper entrances may be nice in the winter but can cause your honey yields
>> to take a dramatic drop and are not necessary even in the hottest and
>> wettest locations...
>Comb building will suffer in a hive which does not conserve heat due to
>being too large or too draughty. I'm curious about the 'dramatic drop' Andy
>mentions being caused by top entrances, how this can be proven -- and how
>he has arrived at this conclusion (one with which I tend to agree --
>without much proof though).
I am not saying that just a simple flight hole in the upper supers would do
all this, but if that hole becomes the principal entrance to the bee hive
things begin to change fast and honey production is the first to suffer.
>Generally hives which lose their lids do not produce honey very well
>around here -- even if there is no rain.
Every area has its little differences. Here in Central California because
the bees do not cluster as they do in the north and east if a hives lid is
blown off in the winter and the hive is in every other way healthy you can
expect that hive or hives to maybe look terrible at the time, exposed to
the elements, and the cluster so tight most beekeepers here would take them
for dead and in fact I have brought them in only to have them revive in the
warmth of the honey barn. These hives in my experience always come out
better in the spring and I am sure it is from the winter chilling or maybe
the complete lack of queen activity. Here the queens never stop laying even
when there is little or no pollen and the worker bees can not feed any eggs
that hatch. I am sure the bees eat several pounds of brood each year on the
average because they can't feed it.
>The entry of light may be a factor here too?
Bees fly to the light, so when light is intense enough they will leave the
hive, sometimes even at night or in the rain if its warm enough and there a
real stinky flow on. The bees if left alone will do their best to control
the light that gets in the hive if they can't do it by nest or hive
selection they will glue it up with plant rosins when available. Some areas
don't have any so road tar, grafting wax, any product with lin seed oil
such as paints or sealers and even beeswax from exposed combs or
foundations will do in a pinch. The back side is when not having enough
entrance light or total light in the hive the bees will enlarge the
entrance or make a new one between the supers or any place the wooden hive
parts lets in a little light.
>Hives which have upper entrances in a yard where other hives do not
>have them may pick up bees from those other hives over time, particularly
>if the yard is disturbed, say by removing and adding supers. Comparing
>two hives, one with and one without upper entrance holes may be difficult
>due to this effect.
Drifting and communication between hives is what has become the number one
vector for the spread of disease, pests, and predator's in commercial and
hobby beekeeping. This was predicted long before any problems resulted
because of the numbers of hives being placed many times for pollination in
any one area.
Some hives do not drift, but unfortunately most of us do not have these
bees and ours drift even under the best conditions. The bigger the bee hive
populations in each hive and each yard the more they communicate but sadly
they do not use jungle drums to do this but the exchange of bees from hive
to hive which has caused the spread of Vampire mites, and also to a lesser
extent it can and does spread the mite chemicals from one apiary or hive to
another and any other chemicals bad or good.
Opps there goes my USA Orgasmic Honey certificate. Yep its not only the
dusty's that bring chemicals into the hive, but your neighboring beekeepers
may be helping you out and you won't even know it unless someone finds an
over load of chemicals in a honey sample.
This is one area that causes, at least to me, when I read of so called
controlled field tests using bee hives, to look with a jaundice eye, maybe
because over the years I have learned how to control drifting in my hives
but NO one to my knowledge has learned how to prevent drifting from hive to
hive or apiary to apiary and that includes feral hives. Field tests that
allow free flight should not be relied on for the last word especially so
with any substance put into the hive as bees live or die by the stinky
signals they receive in their environment and most anything added to their
hive can interfere with these leading up to full collapse down the road at
some later date with no visual cause.
When I say control or controlled drifting that means that the hives even
themselves out in place of ending up at one end or both ends of the yard as
is still common in many bee yards. This is done by not placing the hives in
nice neat rows and in my case having used both placement and multi colored
pastel paints on my wooden goodies not just because these paints were at
one time cheaper. I know of some beekeepers in large pollination projects
that have been able to use this knowledge of drifting to catch the drift
from their neighbors bees and make tremendous crops of honey while their
neighbors hardly make enough to winter. When you go into these pollination
projects you should make yourself aware of such details as prevailing wind
directions and speeds and get on the down wind side or is it the up wind,
anyway you want the bees that come in over loaded to land in your hives no
matter who's they left from.<BG> I can't tell all or I would not have
anything to say later.
>increased and better ventillation --and also much improved production.
I always tell everyone who asks why I do this or that mostly everyday
things that "I do it because I glean 10% more for my labors". I mean what
else are you going to tell people, they would think you are some kind of
nut if you said you do things with your bees because you make more money
keeping bees then you can spend on fast trucks, greasy food, and worn out
waitress. In fact this is not the case, most of what we do is forced on us
by experience as doing it some other way did not work out.. for us as
individual beekeepers. I try to never talk down to what some else is doing
because it may be the thing that works for him in his space, I just let em
know what I have done and if it worked or not for me.
If everything we did resulted in increases of 10% in production we would be
extracting honey year around and selling it for ten cents a pound. All is
fair in Politics and Selling, and that includes mis spoken facts and taking
things out of context. But don't be disappointed if sales are not that
great because beekeepers as a group are/have always been a hard sell with
anything new or different. Must have started when they found out that
swarms really don't come from dead bullocks as reported in the early days.
>(Hmmmm. I've wanted to say something critical about that design ever
>since he wrote me -- out of the blue -- threatening to sue me if I
>attacked his baby.
Most of these things, bee hive improvements, and there have been many over
the years from instruments to pick up the sounds of bees getting ready to
swarm or to sniff out the odors of disease to very to very complicated
solar powered burglar alarms for beehives, in the end they all have failed
because of the high initial costs and not because they did not work,
...that's saying enough about some of what I have seen lately being sold to
beekeepers.
>work and, moreover, some configurations -- particularly those with excess
>uncontrollable air flow -- can cause work to stop prematurely due to
>temperature drop in the hive.
Here in California we have seen our 1998 spring and early summer crops
greatly reduced by below normal outside temperatures. What a difference 10
to 15 degrees departure from normal makes. Last year in May we had normal
temperatures and received 29 days of 80 degrees or above, mostly
above...this year we have had one day when it made it to 80 and most days
its struggled to make it to 70 degrees f... We still have a long season
ahead of us and hopes for better honey conditions as the days get longer.
Sorry to bee such a rambler but its a long weekend and the list police may
take off and forget to turn the list lose so I have combined several
subjects and posts thus saving all bandwidth.<G>
ttul, the OLd Drone
Los Banos, California
http://beenet.com
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