Thank you for the input. I'm just starting to think about the way queens can be reserved for emergency requeening, or queen management used for brood breaks to manage mite populations, or how one can utilize the intention to swarm in their favor.
I'm a scientist at heart. I like experiments. But I also want to manage the hives in a responsible way since bees don't live in a bubble. And, I can't throw endless amounts of money that way so I'm trying to make it at least self sustainable.
I have also been thinking about "How did they do this 2000 years ago? I know people stored honey, used honey. Somehow those bees survived under whatever those people did. Would it work that way again?"
When you look around the honey bee world, there's just a lot of things that seem odd to me. I do search after search and I find beekeepers that burn their skin, kill the grass around the hive and think the bees or the honey come out healthy. Or I find beekeepers that won't touch/manage a hive at all because that's not natural. It makes me wonder where they draw that line. Seems putting them in a hive is also unnatural if you feel that way. Seems capturing swarms from buildings would be unnatural. (If they are stupid enough to make a hive where owners would cut them out of there, doesn't natural selection say they should perish?) I'm trying to find the common sense middle ground. The place where cattle graze on rotating grasslands, and in hooving up the soil creates a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem that benefits all life forms. The place where the animals are still cared for and respected and yet utilized....for the health of all.
