>There appears to be some confusion here on terminology.  A "small hive"
>generally means a small *colony* in a single box, not a large colony in
>multiple boxes with the broodnest confined to a single brood chamber.  This
>thread originally had nothing to do with single brood chamber management.

Agree, the study was about very small colonies started with one and two pound packages placed in observation hives. Then cohorts of newly emerged bees were added and marked - it's those bees that were monitored. 

>I agree with Bill T that the effect upon longevity of very small
>*colonies* appears to be due to a larger proportion of the workers extending their time as
>nurses before transitioning to mid-age and foraging duties.  Note in
>Rueppell's  Fig 5 that when they finally started foraging, those
>extended-nursing foragers didn't live very long.

I may have read it wrong but I interpreted the work differently. I got that the bees in the large colonies physically aged a higher rate both as nurse bees and foragers. 

>Thus, a larger colony size shortened both life history phases independently, which could be caused by a consistently higher work load throughout life. The >large colonies constructed more comb, reared more brood, and foraged at higher rates. This suggests that individual worker lifespan may have been >traded off for overall colony growth. 


My interest in the study was more about the implication that larger colonies may require higher recruitment at all levels.  It's fairly well known that foragers will age out quicker under a heavier nectar flow but I never took that thinking back into the colony's nurse bees. 


Bill Hesbach
Cheshire CT
Northeast USA





 

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