The answer is “no.” Tilting a hive forward is important for anyone using a solid [...]]]> Maybe I’m becoming too cynical, but here’s another beekeeping discussion that makes me crazy. It usually begins when someone asks this reasonable question: “If I’m using a screened bottom board, do I still need to tilt the hive forward?”

The answer is “no.” Tilting a hive forward is important for anyone using a solid bottom board because rainwater or snowmelt can accumulate on the alighting board or blow through the entrance and become trapped inside the hive. A driving wind can blow in a substantial amount of precipitation. But a hive tipped forward allows the water to drain back out.

On the other hand, a screened bottom board is—for want of a better word—screened. Water that comes in through the entrance drops out the bottom. Even with the Varroa drawer in place, the water is removed from the bees’ living quarters and eventually slides off the edge of the drawer and out the bottom of the hive.

Fair question. So far, so good. But then, like clockwork, someone offers this truly bazaar bit of advice: “Even with a screened bottom board you need to tilt the hive so moisture condensing on the inner cover will run to the edge and drain instead of dripping on the bees.” You’ve got to be kidding. Are these people serious? Would they treat malaria with a bandage?

If you have so much condensation at the top of your hive that it flows when tipped, what you need is not a system of diversion drains and downspouts. What you need is a solution to the problem.

Even if you could prevent water from dripping on the bees by draining it off the inner cover (which I doubt—some would drip anyway), much of the water is just going to run down the inside of the hive and wet the interior wall. Some of this water will evaporate and, since evaporation is a cooling process, it will further cool the hive. The saturated wood will not dry easily, but it will sprout a nice assortment of mold, mildew, and fungus.

The same holds true if you skip the inner cover and use only a telescoping outer cover. If the cover is in contact with the edges of the hive (which it probably is) the water will drain down the inside, not the outside, of the hive. This is not what you want.

Most of that moisture can be controlled by providing adequate through-ventilation, insulating the cover, and/or providing a moisture quilt to collect water vapor. Although some humans have water cascading down the walls of their living rooms and call it art, the bees will be healthier if you omit the water feature and prevent the moisture from accumulating in the first place. Dry bees are happy bees.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

I prefer a level hive.

I read your words of frustration with sadness. You have both been told how beekeeping “should” be done and then felt discouraged and annoyed when it didn’t come together. And when you try to think outside the proverbial box, you get criticized by the self-proclaimed beekeeping elite.

In my very [...]]]> Dear Phillip and HB,

I read your words of frustration with sadness. You have both been told how beekeeping “should” be done and then felt discouraged and annoyed when it didn’t come together. And when you try to think outside the proverbial box, you get criticized by the self-proclaimed beekeeping elite.

In my very first beekeeping post I wrote,

“The answer to most beekeeping questions should start with the words, “It depends.” The one-size-fits-all answer simply doesn’t work very often or very well.”

In that post I was specifically thinking about the rift that exists between the hobby and commercial beekeepers, and I explained it this way:

The management options for these groups are different. They have to be. We can learn the most about bees–and beekeeping–by keeping an open mind to the goals and problems of each group. Yes, there are those of us who go to great effort to spare every bee when we enter a hive. We brush them aside, shoo them away, talk to them in reassuring tones. We are, in fact, nuts. But a commercial beekeeper with 1500 hives simply doesn’t have time for the same light touch. He or she is a businessperson with deadlines, contracts, and responsibilities. The commercial beekeeper keeps food on all our tables, but does he care any less about his bees? Absolutely not.

But as time has passed, I feel even bigger rifts exist between the so-called all-natural camp and those who employ various other methods, and between Langstroth keepers and keepers who use other equipment. Each group tries to impose its techniques and values on everyone else and it just doesn’t work.

In my third post I wrote about how “all the challenges are local”—meaning that what works in one climatic region doesn’t work well in another, or what is good in the country may not be good in the city. In fact, these extreme differences are exactly the reason I started writing. I simply do not believe there is any one “right” or “wrong” way to keep bees . . . there are just “different” ways, and beekeeping is one long game of “try-it.” Why is this so hard for people to accept?

HB, if you want to super your top-bar hives, go for it. You don’t need permission from the know-it-all top-bar keepers who try to discourage creativity. Remember that Mr. Langstroth and Mr. Warre and Mr. Top-Bar were all experimenters. That is exactly how they happened onto something new. But I have no doubt they–like many great thinkers–were derided by their contemporaries. And if the so-called natural beekeepers think it is unnatural to super a top-bar, I’d like them to explain why they don’t just release their bees into the wild. Now that would be natural.

Phillip, you are not a bad beekeeper if you want to use foundation. The people who are telling you otherwise are living in the balmy California sunshine. You have an extremely short season and you don’t have time for the bees to draw out all that comb and raise half a billion drones and put-up honey for themselves and put up more for you. Something has to give. To be a good beekeeper, you need a working knowledge of bee biology and bee behavior . . . not a set of rules decreed by a cult.

Although I’ve had the typical ups and downs, overall I’ve been very successful with my bees. But I don’t belong to any one camp. I’ve stolen ideas from the natural guys and the commercial guys, from Warre keepers, top-bar keepers, National keepers, and Langstroth keepers. I’ve taken advice from those with 50 years of experience and those with 50 days, and from beekeepers I’ve liked and ones I haven’t. I’ve used plenty of ideas from non-beekeepers as well. There are so many points of view, so much clever thinking out there, that I always have a backlog of things I want to try.

If we keep an open mind, the possibilities are endless. Once we shut down, we are the ones living in a box . . . and the bees are having a belly laugh.

So, you two, be sure to let me know how your ideas work out. I’m eager to learn more from you both.

Rusty

Yesterday I came across this headline on one of the bee sites: “Could the combination of miticides and varroacides be causing CCD?”

Now what bothers me here is that a varroacide [...]]]> Okay, I know, this is another rant–my second in a week. But this stuff soooo irritates me that I can’t leave it alone.

Yesterday I came across this headline on one of the bee sites: “Could the combination of miticides and varroacides be causing CCD?”

Now what bothers me here is that a varroacide is a miticide. So this is like saying, “a combination of fruit and apples.” Or did they mean a combination of varroacides (in particular) and other miticides (in general?) Or are they totally confused? I suspected the latter.

So I checked out the article they linked to and guess what? The article was about a combination of fungicides and varroacides. So why didn’t they say so? Fungicides are an altogether different type of chemical. It makes me wonder if they even read the article before they reported on it.

In my opinion, writers shouldn’t use words if they don’t know what they mean. And writers who purport to disseminate scientific information have a duty to their readers to get it right—or at least try to get it right.

As far as I know, no one has a corner on the word market. Any writer can look up the words and see what they mean before using them in a sentence. Thing is, this stuff is hard enough to understand without muddled writers mucking it up.

Rusty