Although this thread is quite old, these forums tend to serve as research resources, so I'm going to throw my two cents in, as the Johnny-come-lately:
Keeping bees in order to help "save the bees", while noble, is not going to do much (unless you're letting a feral swarm continue to live in your trees instead of killing them). Spreading knowledge about what is killing the bees might help more. We're in a bit of a pickle these days: most people acquire their bees from packages bred in the south. These bees are genetically inferior to their ancestors, as they have devolved due to pampering by humans. Their wild tendencies have been eliminated in favor of easier managing. Their immune system has been compromised in favor of easier managing. Their gut flora has been thrown out of whack in favor of bigger honey harvests (i.e. feeding syrup to make up for taking too much honey). The last 100 years of industrialized bee farming are catching up with us now; add to that the ubiquity of government-sponsored chemical warfare against nature, government-sponsored monocultures, and the American obsession with manicured lawns. Perfect storm.
It would be great if we could put the bees in a box and then just collect honey whenever we want to make pancakes by turning a spigot. That's not the reality now. The reality is that we have to find a way to re-wild the bees. If we installed a package of Italian bees from Georgia into a hollow tree in Ohio and walked away, they would most certainly die (or abscond, then die). We have to begin to introduce practices that reduce the bee's reliance on humans, and breed for genetics that can survive as feral stock. It doesn't happen overnight though. It will take many years of breeding and *some* form of management for any beekeeper to get his/her bees to the point where they will thrive in a box without much management.
It would be similar to taking a rich kid from the city, dropping him in the woods, and expecting him to survive. He has never had to find his own food, prepare for winter, and fight off attackers.
Keeping animals and bugs in boxes is not natural. We are forcing them to live in spaces they might not choose to live in. My chickens live in a coop; I manage as minimally and as naturally as possible, but they are still in my box, and I am responsible for protecting them somehow, since I'm the one caging them up.
Michael Bush's statement about swarming is dead-on; while swarming is not so much a bad thing, there is a difference between growth expansion and "let's get the hell out of this tiny craphole that human put us in" swarming. The hive must expand and contract based on the bees needs in order to encourage them to stay.
All of that said, no, a lot of the management being done is not truly necessary. But that all depends on the beekeeper's goals. You should feed a new package, you should feed a starving hive, you should split or add space to a hive that wants to swarm, you should reduce the entrance in the fall, and so on. Some beekeepers, however, focus on the short-term and have that deep-burning American desire to intervene when they think the bees are doing it wrong: "OMG! There are some mites in the hive! Release the gas!" You might kill some mites in the short term, but in the long-run, you're going to make the bees dependent on your chemicals. That's a choice that is up to you and you alone.
In the end, if you want to keep bees in a box, you have to do what is necessary to keep them alive and encourage them to stay in that box. Choose the right kind of box, and manage based on that kind of box. The Warre hive was designed to not require a lot of management; it will not need nearly as much as a Langstroth or KTBH. It will need some though. I'm about as hands-off as they come, but I do have to say hello to them once in a while. I change out the quilt material. I give sugar if they'd die otherwise. I nadir the hive with new boxes, and when mother nature is good to us all, I harvest a box of honey from the top. I don't treat for disease though; rather, I make every attempt to create an environment that gives the bees a fighting chance.
As for disrupting the hive, yes, opening it is a disruption. Do you want the FBI busting into your house, rummaging through your drawers and rearranging furniture every other week? It would stress you out, and if you had the means, you'd likely move. If they were kind Feds, they'd leave you jars of sugar so you didn't have to feed yourself. So, you'd drink the sugar syrup instead of going out to work to purchase your own food. Sure, broccoli would be better, but this sugar is free, so why not?
Does opening the hive set it back two weeks? Probably not, if you're just opening it. Smoke will irritate them and stress them out. Rearranging hives will irritate them and stress the out. Destroying their drone brood will irritate them, stress them out, and they'll just work to build more. If it's cold, you'll chill the brood. If it's nectar flow, you'll disrupt their condensing operations. If you break their propolis seal, you may make them vulnerable to pest/disease.
What I'm trying to say is that for every action there is a reaction. Minimal intervention is my personal choice based on my personal beliefs and the goal of my operation. Every time I open the hive (or do any form of management) I consider the consequences of my actions and determine whether my intervention in the long run will benefit the bees.
Set your goals and learn how to achieve them using techniques that fit into your value system. If you want to manage frequently and treat, cool. If you want to manage rarely and not treat, cool. I've seen people achieve success both ways. I personally told myself years ago that if my bees could only survive if I provided them with a constant supply of sugar syrup and vaccinations, then I had no interest in being a beekeeper.
