Its an interesting thread and rather than show rights and wrongs it shows the disparity of intentions and expectations people have.
However, in the broadest of terms, perhaps not surprisingly, I tend to side with Finman that vigorous bees are preferable to those which are 'happy in a single BS deep' (plus supers, maybe a couple, in season). (Vigorous and suitable of course, not vigorous and unsuitable.)
On another forum recently a post showing a bar of brood was posted, as an excellent example of an Amm bood comb, and seemed to be considered what we should all be aiming for, but my first thought on that, if its all the colony can do, was to get rid of the line by requeening or just bump her off and unit it to something better. Without seeing the colony first hand a getting a chance to go through it I would be starting from the standpoint that it was too inbred and had problems.............yet from other, more conservation rather than economics viewpoints it was perfect, but to me it was rubbish. C'est la vie.
Gentle bees? LOL....I don't think many of those who post about gentle bees extolling the virtues of their own stock truly know what gentle bees are.
Swarming? Much of that is caused by the beekeeper. Not enough space for the queen to lay in is the most common issue. A decent queen will lay 2000 eggs a day...so you need 42000 cells for brood alone JUST as a bare minimum...........not including any space for pollen and stores...maximum brood area in a BS deep (we use 11 frames in ours on the old spacing of 1.5") is 55000 cells. A little more in a Langstroth. Not nearly enough when gaps, and stores are taken into account, so you need swarm control measures if WE are not going to cause swarming. If the queen has to hunt around for vacant cells trouble is virtually certain.
Unlike Finman I suspect, we use excluders as a management tool up till late June or so, then remove them. Like Finman we find that the bees then (in poly mostly) change their nest disciple and can literally stick a side or com of brood in anywhere in the bottom three boxes. Nest shape is sort of maintained but you do get oddities in many hives.
This vigour is essential for us, as it gives bee power in August. Attached is a picture, actually taken by one of our bee inspectors and sent to me while they looked in on the apiary passing by to visit another apiary (of another beekeeper) and it shows as starkly as possible the disparity of expectations. This picture was taken near Kingussie in late August last year while the group were at the calluna (ling) and is one of our Langstroth poly units. Every box in these stacks is a standard deep box, and all but a few top boxes are well in use by the bees. There are a variety of sizes of course, there always is, but the tallest there is 8 high. There are a couple of roofs off. I assume inspector nosiness at play. Against this I would find an apiary happy in single BS deeps with a moderate honey crop to be rather depressing.
There are pictures of this group NOW on Twitter. despite the greed and cruelty of the way we work them there are ZERO losses and more than 50% are wall to wall bees ready for the new season.
For those who look on migration as a problem for the bees (putting the beekeepers work to one side) then I really will not argue...its very of that the bees moved around to be kept on crop for as much of the season as possible are the best in spring, and bees that got a good run of it at the heather are almost always among our best the next spring. Work does them good...its what bees are most content at, it helps them and is not exploiting them
But, if you are of a conservation inclination and your ideal is a situation where your bees do not get moved around and are happy in a small box and for a modest crop that's fine. Its a perfectly valid desire. Just not mines.
Frugality? Well I don't like the types of bee that eat everything in sight then peg out from starvation mid season, mostly because we don't have time to run round constantly feeding. But frugality as an aim on its own is a totally false economy. Save maybe 10 quid on feeding in the year and celebrate it and ignore the 50 or 100 less value in crop those bees might bring..........to me its a similar false economy to save money by using starter strips and happy to accept 25% less return...........the loss dwarfs the saving.
