By: Malcolm T. Sanford
This article originally appeared in the Winter 2020 issue of BEEKeeping Your First Three Years
The Board of Honey Bees is grateful for Dr. Seeley’s extensive discussion of the characteristics of our nesting arrangement in his conversation with beekeepers about Darwinian beekeeping. As previously mentioned, crowding nests (hives) into artificial apiaries by beekeepers is generally not helpful for our overall health. A similar conclusion can be developed for humans when designing individual nests, which Dr. Seeley has studied in great detail.
The scouts we deploy take a huge amount of pride in locating nests with certain, specific conditions and locations. The size of the nest, location of its entrance and condition of the interior are all important requisites that are taken into our calculations. Nests provided by beekeepers, in contrast, are all too often designed with humans in mind, leaving us to sort out the details.
The so-called “standard” hive is a case in point. It’s often too big when compared with those we choose. This, according to Dr. Seeley, makes profitable beekeeping more possible, but “…creates a fundamental change in our ecology.” He concludes: “Colonies in large hives have the space to store huge honey crops, but they also swarm less often because they are not space limited. This weakens natural selection for strong, healthy colonies, since fewer reproduce. A more immediate problem of keeping colonies in large hives is that they suffer greater problems with brood parasites, such as Varroa, because large, non-swarming colonies provide these parasites with a vast and steady population of larvae and pupae.”
His advice to beekeepers is summed up in the mantra, “House your bees in small hives.” We agree with his advice to use only one brood box and one medium super with a queen excluder for securing a modest honey crop. We know that this is currently being practiced in the tropics with some success, but our sisters in temperate zones continue to be forced into super-sized colonies to maximize honey production, often to their detriment.
Not on Dr. Seeley’s list, but ours, is the situation encouraging larger hives through the standard hive’s vertical nesting system. Advice is often given to add boxes (supers) on top of the hive at certain times with the notion of encouraging more honey production. This practice has its downside. The break between boxes can interrupt our nest arrangement. The general use of shallower frames in supers is also problematic in vertical systems because these frames cannot be easily substituted with others in the nest should circumstances and/ or specific procedures arise requiring rearrangement.
Keeping us in horizontal hives is a time-honored tradition in many areas of the world. Perhaps the most influential practitioner is Georges De Layens who states in his book Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives, that although the vertical system may look easy enough to manage, it can suffer from the fact that the “…beekeeper determines when to add room and often gets it wrong.”
In the horizontal system, we bees get to add frames at our own discretion and as De Layens concludes, we have the “…knack for taking up the right amount of space based on external circumstances.” Our nest, as a consequence, is more easily managed by inexperienced beekeepers, and generally suffers no loss in honey production when compared to a similar hive using the vertical system.
Other characteristics of the nest described by Dr. Seeley are no less important than correct size. His investigations have shown that most nests in the wild have a rough interior surface. Over time, he has found that we bees convert this into a smooth lining with a substance called propolis. This complex material gathered from plant secretions produces an “antimicrobial shroud” around the combs. He urges beekeepers to help us out by roughing out the interior of wooden colonies or building them with uneven or irregular sawn lumber in the first place.
Most standard beehives are not well insulated according to Dr. Seeley. This can cause problems across the board, but especially in the brood nest area where the temperature must be kept routinely in the ninety degree Fahrenheit range. We concur with his recommendation of using thicker lumber or even going to other materials such as plastic foam. The extreme variability in ambient temperatures around the world can result in a lot of guesswork by the beekeeper during the beekeeping year. It is a good reason that experience in certain geographical settings is a necessity A larger research base for colonies an various habitats is needed, according to Dr. Seeley, so that beekeepers can be better informed to protect us under a variety of environmental conditions.
Dr. Seeley has also studied nest entrances and come to a similar conclusion as that for nest insulation, that more research is needed to understand how entrance height can affect colony success in different settings. Those high above the ground are generally better for us in snowy conditions and/ or keeping us safe from predators (bears, skunks). De Layens has experimented with putting entrances on the sides of his horizontal hives with success. We would like more research attention focused on the size of the entrance. So-called “entrance reducers” come with most standard hives, but when and where to put them in place, and how much reduction is required again is left to beekeepers, who are not as knowledgeable about our requirements as they be.
Dr. Seeley recommends beekeepers, “Minimize disruptions of nest structure, so the functional organization of each colony’s nest is maintained.” Replacing each frame of comb in its original position and orientation in the hive after removing it for inspection is our request as well. And please refrain from inserting empty comb willy nilly among those currently found in the nest containing brood, pollen or honey in the often mistaken idea that this results in less swarming. If anything we ask beekeepers, and Dr. Seeley and De Layens agree to encourage reproductive division (swarming) of the nest, which results in a local healthy honey bee community.
Finally, we plead that beekeepers not consider moving our nests frequently. This disrupts many aspects of our highly-organized society, including brood care and nest thermo-regulation. We, along with Dr. Seeley, conclude that just the stress of the move itself can be debilitating, among other things, requiring that foragers have to relearn their nest’s location via new landmarks with reference to collecting food and water.
