Brood spreading

[Finman]

?

it is allways great pleasure to meet geography teachers in these forums...
They know strange things.

I studied in Helsinki University to become geography teacher but it never succeeded.

 

[BILL.HEARD]

I'm getting a bit lost with this thread!

 

[Poly Hive]

Don't worry about it Bill our friends abroad cannot understand that at times we do things differently.

PH

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

I'm getting a bit lost with this thread!

You need a failed European geography teacher.

Know any, by chance?

D

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Im a qualified navigator and I'm having problems finding my way on this one!

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Its fair to say that bees have been keeping bees for a lot longer than we have, so in general I would not spread the brood for that purpose.

 

[Poly Hive]

What purpose?

PH

 

[susbees]

I agree...but emoticonless....

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[susbees]

And simultaneous posting will make it worse. No compass in town.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[Poly Hive]

So if I understand some comments there is a feeling that helping the bees to attain strength faster is not a good thing?

PH

 

[drstitson]

we're back to the brood box size issue - bees have evolved to naturally select/prefer 40l "boxes" which enables them to reach a point of brood nest "maturity" at an appropriate point in the local season such that swarming occurs at a time when both parent and daughter (often multiple) colonies have best chance of building up post swarm to a point where they have a good chance of surviving through to next season.

survival AND successful reproduction.

in the artificial managed hive situation the beekeeper has a (slightly) different agenda for his bees - survival and controlled reproduction whilst giving a honey excess to harvest.

Thus one cannot draw direct comparisons between natural brood nest structure (constrained as it is within a fixed volume cavity) and the variable expandable system in which we choose to house our charges.

are the critics of PH also critics of those who split hives into nucs - making arbitrary choices re composition wrt bees, brood and stores and QC positions?

anyone unwilling to consider managing their hives, as practiced by experienced beeks, should perhaps join the NBT or just get a warre hive and be done!

 

[Finman]

Don't worry about it Bill our friends abroad cannot understand that at times we do things differently.

PH

Like excluders in winter!.
Taken in Spring away? I will try too.

 

[drstitson]

Finman - you must understand that the UK beek population is composed predominantly by either beginners (and i'll happily position myself here) or those with 1 or 2 hives. most of those accept the word of the BBKA/local association as gospel and limit their knowledge to the contents of a couple of beekeeping bibles, mostly not updated since varroa was renamed, or whose authors are dead.

 

[Finman]

Finman - you must understand that the UK beek population is composed predominantly by either beginners (and i'll happily position myself here) or those with 1 or 2 hives. most of those accept the word of the BBKA/local association as gospel and limit their knowledge to the contents of a couple of beekeeping bibles, mostly not updated since varroa was renamed, or whose authors are dead.

Yes, must things....

 

[Poly Hive]

Precisely Dr and when some silly person tries to say there is another and possibly better way of doing things a cart load of exc****nt suddenly drops out the sky.

If I could only find a simple way of creating the drawings I want it would be obvious but I am struggling with the illustrations for this one.

Then again why bother.

PH

 

[drstitson]

PH - have you considered just making a set of pen drawings you can cut out, move around and repeatedly photograph? probably easier in the long run - i had a hell of a job just roughly editing a pre-existing picture last year.

BTW doesn't have to be true stop motion - don't need a tony hart/morph type video with frames sliding all over the place - just a master "brood box matrix" (ie a series of columns labelled 1-10 or 1-12), some frame labels (A-J or A-L), and various frames with different contents - Brood, foundation/comb, stores, plus brood/stores.

 

[drstitson]

"Then again why bother"

on some levels I wholeheartedly agree. i accept that some will make conscious decisions wrt how they keep/manage their bees - horses for courses etc.

what's worrying is that there are those who have a blind adherence to advice in the bibles (eg hooper, BBKA rags) without accepting evidence from those with 100s of hive-years managing experience.

read the old books - snelgrove, manley etc and there is much more willingness to discuss a wide church wrt differing experience.

 

[wightbees]

I have been reading this in T H Book. It has some basic pics but it gets the message across easy enough.

 

[drstitson]

TH described method is not quite as extreme as that proposed by PH and practised by seasoned bee farmers!

basically just moving outer frames in a bit and letting the bees even things up rather than more wholesale flipping of end frames, opening up centre with foundation etc etc.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Precisely Dr and when some silly person tries to say there is another and possibly better way of doing things a cart load of exc****nt suddenly drops out the sky.

If I could only find a simple way of creating the drawings I want it would be obvious but I am struggling with the illustrations for this one.

Then again why bother.

PH

Don't be too despondent - some of us are eagerly awaiting a fuller explanation then (I) will decide whether it is a method worth trying in each individual case.
Thanks PH for bothering as much as you have so far