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We work everywhere in the hive with same frames and the same box measures because it should all be interchangeable. And since we work with an unlimited brood nest, the nest increases with the duration of the year and grows up and when the main honey flow comes, it is pushed down by itself, because the bees deposit their honey, especially above. Because, of course, good timing is needed, otherwise you have big hives without honey if the main flow does not coincide with the maximum strenght of the hive. This means that we need and want no queen excluders.
We must avoid everything that the bees do not want – otherwise there is stress for them and it scratches on her immune system. Since the small cell bees have a much longer life expectancy than the large cell bees, 8 -12 weeks, we get very strong colonies and the hygienic behaviour is formed much stronger.
Here we see two videos where two women work in 10 days, 700 hives. One is Dee Lusby and the other is a friend of hers. This is the first review of the colonies, a month after the end of winter break, so in the spring.
In the film we see them handle these enormous hives without the use of smoke. She does this not to scare the bees in the hives, because there are already some hives that are so strong that she just makes nucs with whole boxes. If she sees a hive that is already too strong and has too little place for brood rearing and eventually already has swarm cells, she simply looks whether open brood is in the box and places it on a different place, as a nuc – no matter where the queen is. This must all go very quickly. So only hves are treated, which are much too strong, the others get place, that the queen is not stopped in breeding. And now comes the most amazing – Dee speaks of hives with 120,000 bees – and this in the spring. I couldn’t believe it again and I simply tried it. It works well also here. In the Canary Islands. But not because of the hot climate, like the first thought is. In the mountains of Arizona, it’s freezing cold in winter, much snow, and many degrees below zero. I have several of these hives now and I see that the bees change their behavior – they are very safe and it seems that nothing can harm them.
Some criticize these movies and say that the bees were so aggressive. I know how it is when 70 hives must be completely disassembled in a row in a day and you must make nucs, with no smoke – all my respect – something I’ve never seen before.