[squarepeg]

"Reduced density and visually complex apiaries reduce parasite load and promote honey production and overwintering survival in honey bees."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31120911


now they tell me. pretty much the management strategy i plan to implement pending recovery of the efb outbreak.

 

[Fivej]

Interesting. Food for thought. Thanks Squarepeg.

 

[gww]

Square...

now they tell me. pretty much the management strategy i plan to implement pending recovery of the efb outbreak

What isn't mentioned is that the mowing is going to be much more complicated.
Cheers
gww

 

[little_john]

Good post - thanks.

... foragers were more than three times more likely to drift in the HD apiary configurations.

And yet so many people will insist on placing their hives a few inches apart - good to see some evidence to back up the advice to space them much further apart.
LJ

 

[SuiGeneris]

Its an interesting study, but with so many variables that its hard to nail down which ones were the beneficial ones.

The "high density" colonies had 8 hives, all:

• the same colour
• the same height above the ground
• doors in the same direction
• in a single linear row with 1 meter (3') spacing.

The "low density" colonies had 8 hives which were:

• different colours and had different patterns painted on them
• were positioned different heights above the ground
• had their doors orientated in different directions
• were arranged in a circle with 10 meter (33') spacing

That's a lot of variables between the two test groups, and I wonder which ones are truly necessary and which ones are not. Colour + door orientation may be just as good as large spacing (or have no effect), but as the study is designed, there is no way to determine which variables are responsible for the reduced drift.

 

[texanbelchers]

My hives are currently setup in 2 rows of 6 pairs. I requeened 8 in these rows and setup 6 nucs dropped around in the field. 5 out of the 6 nucs resulted in laying queens. One (1) of the eight in the rows did. It felt like some may have swarmed with the new queen, but it could have been a lost queen and major drift. I'm glad I had the nuc backup.

I'll be rearranging shortly. New queens for increase again after I pull honey.

To add because of the previous post. All my boxes are white, 8 frame medium. The nucs were singles, those in the rows were at least 3 with much larger population. More variables to consider...