>
> >The important question is whether the same results could be achieved by
> simply dividing the colony every time they reached a certain critical mass.
> .. one wonders if it could be shoehorned into a profitable scheme.


A number of us do exactly that.  I gross nearly as much from selling nucs
as I do from almond pollination.

>
> >And how much honey mediocre colonies would produce is anyone's guess.


Back in the days before varroa, many hives were kept in the back yard or
orchard to supply pollination and perhaps a bit of honey.  Those unmanaged
hives typically swarmed each spring, and often survived for many years
without any input from the property owner (back then a "beekeeper" could be
one who simply provided a hive in which the bees could keep themselves).

In the Darwinian study by Seeley, the restriction of the colonies to a
single deep appeared to suppress varroa.

Of interest, when I analyze Seeley's raw data, the intrinsic rate of
reproduction of varroa (based upon their mite counts), appears to be
completely normal during spring and summer buildup between swarm events.
The frequent swarming appears to be a major factor in reducing the mite
pop, but this then precludes honey harvest, since you'd want the bees to
crowd the box with honey in order to increase the swarm impulse.  Seeley
harvested zero honey from those colonies.

>A.m.m. lives happily in a single brood box.

So does A.m. ligustica, provided what one gives them on or more additional
boxes to store honey in during the flow.  Note that the British National
hive provides more comb space than does a Dadant deep.   That said, A.m.m.
clearly has adapted to your climate, and builds up differently than do
typical A.m. ligustica stocks.

>Double brood in a British National can lose you 50lbs of honey, perhaps
more, that would have gone into the supers.

It is common practice in many areas to harvest all the honey, and then feed
back sugar syrup for wintering.  Some of us don't do that, and allow our
bees to winter on natural honey.  Of course this practice depends upon the
fall honey being suitable for wintering--canola, ivy, or honeydew are
notable for being tough for bees to winter on.

  >OK, you do need to do a little more swarm control, but how difficult is
that?

This thread was about Darwinian beekeeping, of which swarming appears to be
a necessary factor.  Pete's post bears repeating: "The point of the article
on "Darwinian beekeeping" is not the size of the hive but the size of the
colony. The colonies are never allowed to become what we regard as a full
strength colony."

If our goal is to produce honey or to earn a living from beekeeping, we
then promote more broodrearing and larger colony sizes than typically occur
in nature.  The unintended effect of this (which didn't used to be a
problem) is that we also produce more varroa fodder.


--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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