I have been doing a bit of reading and came across this beekeeping method. Is anyone familiar with it and/or have a view. Both sides of the argument (less interference and natural swarming versus a lot of intervention and no swarming) makes for interesting reading. Would be good to hear some views from experienced bee keepers.
Thanks
Roy
Where to begin?
The basic tone of the site seems to be more to do with the writer's (and some contibutors) belief structure than with what is best for the bees. It is a complex mix of good stuff, anthropomorphic stuff (which sucks in novices) and nonsense.
Comb rotation is a good idea. It does not need 'feelgood' names like a 'harmony frame' for what appears to be a drone frame. But you need to know what you are doing with this. Just as an example, it seems the author isin a varroa free area (I think western Australia) so a drone frame is not the potential varroa factory it is here when it is allowed to hatch rather than as a varroa trap.)
Bear in mind the author is not living in a UK environment. Our climate and flow patterns are not conducive to this constant meddling and insertion of empty frames into the nest. You can do it during nectar flows and the spring expansion phase, but at other times, especially if you have near native black bees, the new frames can act as a barrier, and we have seen swarming CAUSED by insertion of the frames, not alleviated by it, if the timing and circumstances are wrong, or if some of our staff have been let loose a tad early and inserted two empties together in error.
Rotating out old combs to be melted out? Fine. We date stamp all our frames since the 2009 EFB outbreak, but do this as a plan to reduce the risk of disease build up. The reducing cell size and consequent reduction in bee size is one of the oft repeated myths of the craft/trade and has been said so many time that it became accepted as fact and stidies were produced to show it. Yet its still drivel. Bees love old comb, they clean it out every spring (brown papery dust outside the entrance tells you what they are up to) and HAD some combs identified as at least 50 and in the case of one pattern Dave Cushman identified for us, 70 years old. Brood combs of such age, bred in most years, yet the bees from them were indistinguishable from any others and the cell walls were not thick. Should have been producing bees the size of fruit flies by then. These old combs are now all gone from our units but they were always the ones laid in first, and were swarm magnets if they were ever used for that purpose.
There is also nothing new about the concept of removing lots of brood from the nest to eliminate congestion, a common swarm trigger. Its the basic priniple behind the Demaree system and simplified Demaree system, which is over 100 years, works fine, and requires less faffing about. Lots of ways to do it, and lots of reasons for doing it.
You have good windows for new comb insertions in this country, but you have to be able to read the colonys state, the weather, and other factors, and if things are not favourable (no nectar flow, nest not expanding, queen slow in laying which is common in dearths) then instead of expanding the nest you are dividing it up, and foundation sheets in those circumstaces can act more like a dummy board than a potential new brood comb. For example we NEVER insert new combs in the June gap, though we will split or demaree using drawn comb if needed. (June gap unlikely to be an issue (for US) in 2013 as it is going to be a very compressed season)
No need to restrict yourself to two new frames per season either. If the bees are in the mood let them have as many as they will take, but successionally, not more than two at a time, and never more than one for every four bars of brood, so two is only for strong colonies, and never together, always at least one bar of brood between them. ( I can enlarge on that if asked)
Its a superficially simple subject but lots of nuances to it that mean you can do it right one week and exactly the same manoever a couple of weeks later can be wrong. Consult an experienced local mentor if in doubt.
