Anyone used the Hungarian rotating brood champer?

[wkinne]

Does it work to kill verroa?

http://www.troyamed.org/img/rotating...me_beehive.pdf



thanks,
Wayne

[Michael Bush]

If you want to experiment with the concept, back in the 1860s the in thing was reversible hives and reversible frames. The apex of this concept was the Hedden hive. Both the boxes and the frames were reversible. By reversible they meant you could flip them upside down. The Heddon had a clamp that held the frames together and a frame in a frame so you could flip the frame upside down. You could put a strip of steel strap across the ends to keep the frames from falling out and bend them and screw them into the sides and then flip the boxes upside down every week or maybe every four days. In the 1860s the object was to prevent swarming. But you could get the same effect of messing with the Varroa...

But who wants to lift all those boxes...

[wkinne]

But does it work? Will the flipping of the brood stop the verroa? Also did it work to stop swarms? And if so, why? Queen cell wont work inverted?

Already thinking of trying a test


thanks

Wayne

[beeware10]

for some reason beekeepers love miracle drugs and the hardest way to do something. even if this did work it does not appear to be pracitical. anything that rotates and bee glue does not belong in the same sentence. most people should strive to improve their beekeeping rather than reinvent the wheel.

[Michael Bush]

>But does it work? Will the flipping of the brood stop the verroa?

I have no idea, but it would work as well as the rotating one, IMO as it would be the same principle.

>Also did it work to stop swarms?

Yes. But it was WAY too much work.

> And if so, why? Queen cell wont work inverted?

I think it's just that the brood nest was rearranged by the bees every time it got flipped. They want some honey across the top and so they have to move that etc. and of course if they started a queen cell, it is now upside down. I doubt a queen would emerge from an upside down cell, although Huber proved they could emerge from a horizontal one.

[wkinne]

for some reason beekeepers love miracle drugs and the hardest way to do something. even if this did work it does not appear to be pracitical. anything that rotates and bee glue does not belong in the same sentence. most people should strive to improve their beekeeping rather than reinvent the wheel.

Ya, lets just let verroa kill em all, what the heck, we don't have any responsablity for getting the verroa to transfer to asian honey bees anyway. And lets go back to harvesting all our honey from trees and quit all this "feed the world pollinating" too, so un-natural.

Or.... we could do as our creator instructed us, to have dominion and be their keeper, humm. Lets see, use them to feed the world, and try to make life for them as comfortable as we can, or just let the verroa kill them and half the world population. Personaly I hope it's not my half.

Unless your raising your bees in hollow trees, get real. Sorry but you just make zero sence to me, either we do this and do our best at it, or we leave them to the woods. Do you have a cat or dog in your home? I have some wild coyotes eating my chickens, I will live trap some for you and you can enjoy dogs as nature ment them to be!

[Michael Bush]

I have no Varroa issues to resolve, so I won't be trying it. If I did, it looks like way to complicated a solution.

[Kazzandra]

What it reminds me of is that the traditional peeling off and putting on of Langstroth boxes is way too much work. I really like how you can examine the brood box on this design without disturbing the supers.
I've long been thinking that it seems you could make a Langstroth 'dresser' where you could pull out boxes despite their organization and take a peek with minimal interruption to the rest of the hive. I guess it would require some heavy-duty protection of the moving parts from the bees, but it would seem doable.
Beekeeping has got to be the only agriculture using equipment from a hundred (Langstroth) to hundreds (TBH) of years ago. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does show that there is room for improvement.

[sqkcrk]

Considering what bees do, your "drawer" hive would be all glued tightly shut by the bees and I don't see how one would get drawers to work.

If you think that Langs get to tall to quickly, why don't you start off by setting them on a cpl of narrow concrete boxes and then harvest each box of honey as soon as it is capped. One can manage a Lang type hive w/ one or two shallow supers above the brood supers.

Sitting almost on the ground that would be about countertop heigth. And even more shallow supers are available or can be built. Like comb honey supers, but w/ frames in them.

[dixiebooks]

<snip>anything that rotates and bee glue does not belong in the same sentence. <snip>

I was thinking the same thing.

"most people should strive to improve their beekeeping rather than reinvent the wheel."

Technically, it is more of a rotating drum than a "wheel". :-O

-james

[Oldtimer]

I have a Hungarian friend, who keeps a few hives as a hobby. He is an old guy who escaped Hungary many years ago as a teenager, when the russians invaded to support the then puppet communist government.

Now he can visit Hungary with no safety concerns so went for several months last year. Before he went he was very excited about the rotating hive and was constantly try to convince me of it's merits. He was planning to bring a dozen or so back with him and felt this would revolutionise beekeeping.

When he came back, to my surprise, he didn't have any. He had been to see them in action, and had long conversations with people who use them. He was hugely dissapointed, but had to conclude they were a waste of time ( and money ). He said they do not stop varroa, and also the constant disruption to the bees meant those hives did a lot worse than normal hives plus needed constant work.

On the plus side, he brought home a huge number of photos of the beekeeping methods in Hungary and other European countries. Some of it modern, and some still done exactly the same as in medieval times, very interesting.

[bluegrass]

Beekeeping has got to be the only agriculture using equipment from a hundred (Langstroth) to hundreds (TBH) of years ago. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does show that there is room for improvement.

There are only so many ways you can configure a box with frames in it I frequently invent something for beekeeping, just to discover a short time later that it already has been done. That is the way beekeeping is, it had been around so long and is so basic in nature that there just are not any real advances left... IMO the only advancements left to be made will involve genetic engineering and will not be done in the backyard hive.

There are many new and improved hives over the Langstroth... Rose hive, DE hive etc. There are at least a dozen variations of polyethylene hives available that are configured differently then the Lang hive.

[wkinne]

He said they do not stop varroa, and also the constant disruption to the bees meant those hives did a lot worse than normal hives plus needed constant work.

Thanks much, nice information. No verroa and no swarming sounded like a great combo.

[Specialkayme]

There are many new and improved hives over the Langstroth... Rose hive, DE hive etc. There are at least a dozen variations of polyethylene hives available that are configured differently then the Lang hive.

It's odd that you don't hear about any of those though.

[bluegrass]

It's odd that you don't hear about any of those though.

Only if you confine your studies to modern day US beekeeping... Look to the land to the north and Europe and you will know about many hives developed post Langstroth that are commercially produced.

[pbuhler]

to wkinne:
Your post, #6 is way to harsh. Most people come to their conclusions from their experiences. I'm learning from my bees every day and and when I follow their lead I get the best results - this doesn't mean that I don't experiment (sometimes getting good results, sometimes not so good) and I listen to other ideas. I'm learning how to create a healthy environment for my bees, and then get out of their way.
It's tough to elaborate succinctly.
Notice that the conclusion to inverting the frames was not very positive.

[Specialkayme]

Look to the land to the north and Europe and you will know about many hives developed post Langstroth that are commercially produced.

As an American I've been bred to ignore the land to the north . . . except during Olympic season. Just kidding, lol.

I almost got a tour of an Estonian apiary, but the roads were untravelable when I visited there . . . last december.

Its not that I'm "confining" my studies to modern day US beekeeping, it's just that it's what's available to me.

[bluegrass]

The world is at our fingertips. Thorne deals with the British hives as well as the Dadant. Swienty deals with Poly hives.

https://secure.thorne.co.uk/cgi-bin/...R_ID=288364937

http://www.swienty.com/uk/home.asp

Canada's D.E hive can be bought here: http://www.beeworks.com/index.html

[wkinne]

to wkinne:
Your post, #6 is way to harsh.
[snip]
Notice that the conclusion to inverting the frames was not very positive.

I did say I was sorry, but I just think it silly when someone says "I never put anything in my hive nature would not put there", what a joke, when did mother nature start growing langstroth hives? I been paying good money for them, where do they grow? I need to harvest about 250 of them and I have a friend that needs 50

I can't for the life of me figure out what these people are doing with all these empty hives, storeing empty frames in em maybe?

[wkinne]

I did a little research and this is what I found:

Reproduction of Varroa Mites in capped brood frames written by Dr G. Donze, Dr P. Fluri and A. Imdorf (issued in Die Biene, 1998/1, Switzerland)

Says:

"Mites take bearings by the help of gravitation. When the bee larva develops into pupa - as this process is accompanied with much movement - mites are often brushed off the faeces, but they immediately return to their residence which is their orienting point. Following larva transformation into pupa, mother mite descends from the faecal pile again and perforates the new coat of the pupa to ensure the possibility for feeding. Young mites also stay near the residence and climb down for food from there. "