Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

flipping frames in brood nest

3K views 10 replies 7 participants last post by  Keith Benson 
#1 ·
I saw a practice in the Dee Lusby videos (Biological Beekeeping: http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218224&highlight=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?
 
#4 ·
...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
 
#6 ·
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?
 
#9 ·
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.
 
#10 ·
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top