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Author Topic: What causes the day or two "setback", when opening the hive?  (Read 1603 times)

Offline robk23678

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From everything I've read, the opening of the hive causes the bees to have a day or so setback in their activities. Is this caused strictly by smoking them?

Offline BlueBee

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Re: What causes the day or two "setback", when opening the hive?
« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2013, 05:50:05 pm »
Good question.  This might be one of those fairy tales Finski talks about?

I haven't noticed a set back in my hives from inspecting, but I don't have the hives on scales so I really don't have any hard data to prove my hunch.

I've gotten lazy so I only smoke the bigger hives anymore when I'm stealing honey.  The nucs are almost always docile and I work them without smoke.  However I'm not advising that is a good practice either.

Offline robk23678

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Re: What causes the day or two "setback", when opening the hive?
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2013, 06:23:48 pm »
I ask because I opened the hive for a peek yesterday, without smoking them, since I added the 2nd deep about 5 days ago. My girls are gentle, so I didn't worry about it. Just don't want them to get any delays, since we only have about 6 weeks of "warm" before frost starts.

On a side note, I added the 2nd deep, and in 5 days they are already drawing out on every frame. I think I did piss them off a bit when I plugged the hole in the lower deep.

Offline Oblio13

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Re: What causes the day or two "setback", when opening the hive?
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2013, 09:32:02 pm »
If a giant tore the rood off your house, broke a bunch of your furniture, spilled sticky food all over the place, and squashed a few of your relatives, might it set you back a day or two also?

Offline JWChesnut

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Re: What causes the day or two "setback", when opening the hive?
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2013, 01:20:36 am »
I've been a bit of a one-note-Johnny on the subject of leaving the brood nest alone. 

Would be useful to clarify and expand on the limits to disturbance. 

I don't think lifting the cover and peeking "under the hood" has much material effect on the hive.  In a hive with honey supers, you frequently can do that without smoke, and with no apparent alarm reaction from the bees tending the curing nectar.  In a single story hive or nuc, just observing the "cover" of bees on the top bars- tells you loads about the condition of the hive.

Smoking changes the bee behavior-- I'm not sure how long the residual smoke disrupts the hive, on light smoking I don't see any fanning to remove the smoke.  A old beek whom I befriended described deliberately smoking hive to encourage wax production. The idea was wax is generated by house bees with their crops filled and no place to put the syrup.  Smoking makes bees fill their crops>hence the idea this artificially encouraged wax (and comb drawing).

The critical question on a new hive is there brood and eggs, and what is the pattern.  This can be observed by 1) looking at the cover on the top bars, and 2) moving in from the side until the first frame with brood is observed (typically on the outside of the #3 frame).   This is often just a softball (or smaller) sized pattern on the exact center of the frame.  These are typically among the youngest brood- so are the most recent snapshot of the queen activity.  There is no need to go any further.  Stop there. 

I don't see hives swarm without raising a frame of drones, if you got to the outer edge of the brood cluster without seeing a frame of drone brood below the pollen archway on #2 -- the hive is not swarm ready.  Queen cups may be further inside the nest -- but these are an internal matter of the colony for supersedure-- if you see eggs and brood, you don't need to make any intervention.

In declining hives with chalk brood or simply a failing queen, the outer brood frame is usually the most afflicted and the dead abandoned rather than cleaned awsy (the declining population pulls toward the center of the nest).  So you are most likely to detect these problems on the outer frame.

In my observation, while honey frames are often only drawn from one side, the brood frames are usually matched front to back with larvae.  This means the outside of the frame carries some brood before the queen and consorts move onto another frame.

A hive without brood won't cover the top bars in the same way, no brood to cover so the nest disperses more widely.

Offline Better.to.Bee.than.not

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Re: What causes the day or two "setback", when opening the hive?
« Reply #5 on: July 12, 2013, 05:14:17 am »
ya, copy that JW on the wax production, and that is also I believe the root of the rumor of 'setting the hive back'.....the bees will consume the honey preparing for emergency mode, and that of course sets honey back a bit, surely, leading beeks to think of it as a setback, when in reality...they are bees and still actually doing things after the few minutes of filling themselves and stopping from the smoke. then again maybe they like super smoked em for the observation too, who knows, or smoked them multiple times.

Offline Michael Bush

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Re: What causes the day or two "setback", when opening the hive?
« Reply #6 on: July 12, 2013, 09:59:58 am »
>From everything I've read, the opening of the hive causes the bees to have a day or so setback in their activities. Is this caused strictly by smoking them?

A day or two is a total exaggeration.

Smoking actually minimizes it by causing LESS of a disruption.  I seriously doubt the numbers.  I'm sure opening them up disrupts things somewhat.  If I open them without smoke and a defensive reaction gets started you can see them still being more defensive a week later.  If I smoke them and work for a while you can tell the smoke starts to wear off in a matter of a few minutes.
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