Curtis Crowell said:

> My reading of material on this topic suggests it is best to blow up
> from under the bottoms of the frames, not the other way around.

Yes, if you feel that you MUST accelerate your bees to Mach 1.3
with a device designed to blow around dead leaves, then you really
do want to blow from the bottom of the super.

Look closely at a cross-section of honeycomb.  Note that the cells
have a slight downward slant as they go from the capping inward
towards the foundation.  This is to keep liquid nectar in the cells.

Now look closely at a frame of bees.  Note that many bees will
go headfirst into a cell for many reasons (cleaning, resting, whatever).

Now start your leaf blower.  If you were to blow from the top, the sudden
hurricane you create will be blowing the bees downward, and make it
difficult, if not impossible for those bees in cells to get out of the cells.
Enough velocity, and you will break these bees in half.

If you blow from the bottom, those bees with their heads "in cells"
have more of a chance to survive.  They are not certain of survival,
since one still has the "flapping" effect of frames banging together,
and the random (empty or nearly empty) frame that will become
suddenly airborne, sailing across the bee yard, and putting a small
dent in your nice new truck.

...and Mark Coldiron said:

> If you've never used a blower for this purpose, you'll certainly need to put
> some screen over the intake of the blower.  Otherwise the bees will be
> sucked in and you'll have a very efficient bee chop-o-matic and spray
> chopped bees all over the frames!

A good point.  All "leaf blowers", by definition "suck".

But more to the point, they suck.   :)

I don't like blowers.  I would not suggest them for anyone
who has a neighbor living near their beeyard.

For those who think they like blowers, I'd suggest that they try their
blower on a super inside a cleanly-swept barn, and then do a body
count.  Another body count is possible at the first-stage filter after
the extractor, to count those bees that died, but stuck to exposed
honey, or in the cells.

Another quick way to kill bees with a leaf blower is to use the stand
sold by Dadant that has the metal plate at a 45-degree angle below
the working surface.  Who invented this mass-production genocide
machine?  First, it encourages one to blow from the top of the
super, and the bees that survive this treatment are promptly
slammed into the metal plate!

I'm a beekeeper, not a bee killer.  Too many otherwise productive
bees die as a result of unavoidable hive manipulation "collateral damage".
I want to keep this number as low as possible, so all the bees can work
for me.  A dead bee is a highly unproductive bee.

        jim