I get a chuckle out of Allen's views and his supposed superior way of keeping bees.
We scrape our honey supers and dead outs every spring before the season starts,
sorting comb, introducing new comb, but we also scrape the bottom and top bars every

time we break the hive down, sure, Allen may consider killing a few meaningless
workers "acceptable", it just blows me away that there is a very good chance that
the queen, the most important bee in the hive, could be there as well, is that
"acceptable" beekeeping as well if you kill her off?  The only time it is beneficial

to not scrape the bottom bars is during the final pull, which we do as to allow the
bees to seal the hive for the upcoming winter.  What does it take to scrape the top
and bottom bars, mere seconds, and you prevent the killing of bees and the queen, as

well as allow better air flow through the hive, and keeping the hive cleaner and
more easily workable.  I think Allen's comments on the "holier than thou" beekeepers

and his "seeing the light" are coming from a different hole in his body, his way is
the lazy way on this folks, ask any large commercial beekeeper that produces a crop
of honey, and the will tell you that they scrape the bars as well!  I agree that you

shouldn't be in the hives every day, but during a good flow, they can fill three
supers in three days, what should we do then, still leave them for a couple weeks
and get to them when we feel like it, in the mean time the bees are in the trees, is

this good management as well?  If you don't scrape them throughout the active
season, all you get is a unneeded mess inside of the hives.  Allen has some good
ideas and views, but this is not one of them!!!

Lee Townsend
TPLR Honey Farms
Stony Plain, Alberta