This is my first post on this forum, and in regards to beeking, I'm profoundly green but coming, nevertheless, with some transferable skills. Just now I'm in Frantic Research Mode— really ste-e-p learning curve—and there is this one basic, and pressing, question that I can't get a straight-forward answer to, much searching and asking not withstanding.
My over-arching goal is to find a system of bee keeping that will maximize honey harvest and bee health with a minimum of labor and capital input, and that will be sized to fit within my resource parameters. Nearly as soon as I'd begun digging, it seemed like some type of vertical TBH system was the way to go, leaning more toward Oscar Peron's big "hand's off " hives rather than the little stacks of little Warre' boxes. Very soon The Question arose: Just what are the limits to colony size??? Judging from what others have said, the limits to colony size are set mainly by 1. what the beekeeper can handle and keep secure in terms of weight, size, and strength of the hive's structure (as well as his/her own "structure"!), 2. the amounts of nectar and pollen available throughout the year, and 3. the presence or absence of stress (whether from humans, animals, disease, internal and external climate, etc.) The limits imposed by queen and worker physiology/genetics would seem to be less restrictive than the first three factors. This may be at least part of the thinking behind the Perone hive. In short, if there's any concensus at all among the experts, (and that's a huge 'if'), it would be that for bee colonies: bigger = healthier = stronger= bigger still, up to the limits imposed by bees themselves and the quantity and quality of nutrition easily available to them.
IF the above three conditions can be taken care of in such a way that they impose little restriction in and of themselves on colony size, just what size might a colony attain over a few years' time??
Can anyone shed some light on this? :?