flipping frames in brood nest

[JohnBeeMan]

I saw a practice in the Dee Lusby videos (Biological Beekeeping: http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...ighlight=lusby) that I do not understand. While they were manipulating frames there was a comment that they were flipping the frame to keep the arrow pointed toward the center of the brood nest. This was done when moving a frame from one side of the hive to the other.

What is the purpose of doing this?

[odfrank]

If I had bees that wild I would be flipping out, not flipping frames.

[Ardilla]

She is practicing Housel positioning. There have been several discussions on it here.

[deknow]

...if you look at a piece of backlit comb, look in an empty cell...you will see either a "Y" or an "upsidedown Y"...flip the frame and you will see the opposite.

it appears that in many cases, when building a nest, the bees will consistantly put the "upsidedown Y" facing the center of the nest. all 7 swarm traps we hived were setup like this.

dee marks the tops of the topbars so she doesn't need to look at the comb to see if it is correct.

the idea is that when moving a frame from 1 side of the nest to the other, the comb must be flipped in order to maintain this orientation.

dee claims that she was unable to get the hives to build up more than 3 deep boxes until she started paying attention to this.

deknow

[JohnBeeMan]

Thanks. After doing the search I found the link to Dee's discussion of the technique.
http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/housel.htm

[Tim Hall]

Hmmm...I started reading about this too, after stumbling across this thread. What I don't quite get is the center comb she (Lusby) describes as having the "Y's" oriented the same direction on both sides. Maybe I'm a little slow, but it doesn't seem to be physically possible. :confused: At any rate I suppose this "center" comb doesn't really exist in a man-made (or woman-made) hive?

[Keith Benson]

Does anyone know if Mr. Housel practices Housel Positioning?

Keith

[Tim Hall]

Maybe I'm a little slow...

I am a little slow. I had to sketch it out (hey I'm an illustrator, not an engineer!) before it occurred to me that two hexagons, one being rotated 90 degrees, are not concurrent geometries (like a square or octagon would be).

[Troy]

Mr. Housel is a member of our local bee club and I have spoken to him about this "Housel positioning".

Though he did not say whether he does or does not practice it, he did say that he wasn't too pleased with all of the controversy it stirred up. He got a lot of hate mail and nasty emails following this "observation"

I guess I will have to quiz him more thoroughly on this.

I have hived a few swarm trapped colonies and I tried to ascertain if this were true and could not confirm the notion. Even if it were confirmed, I question whether following the convention makes any difference to the bees.

It's just my opinion - but this idea is nothing more than an observation until someone does a double blind study on this feature alone.

[Troy]

It's best just to look at some natural comb to see what they are talking about.

Here is a good description: http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm#housel

Here is a good picture:
http://www.bushfarms.com/images/Conf...ombCloseup.JPG

Maybe I'm slow, but I don't think a square nor an octagon are concurrent when turned thru 90 deg either. In this discussion what is really meant by the word concurrent?

Did you mean 180 deg?

[Keith Benson]

He got a lot of hate mail and nasty emails following this "observation".

That is a shame, I don't recall that it was he that was beating the "housel positioning" drum. I guess that is what I was wondering about, does he feel his name is being taken in vain.

Keith