Comb Management

<p>Honey bees can successfully live in all sorts of different nest sites – a hole</p><p>in a tree a chimney pot or a bee-hive – but in all cases this is just a cavity in</p><p>which to make a set of combs. It is in and on these combs that all the within</p><p>the colony functions occur. Because it is dark in the hive communication is</p><p>through pheromones or vibration and combs provide the ideal carrier for this</p><p>information. For example bees can always locate the queen by following</p><p>the trail of her footprint pheromone on the combs. The main outside the</p><p>hive activities are foraging swarming and queen mating. As beekeepers</p><p>interested in the production of honey we tend to concentrate on the foraging</p><p>activities of our bees and it is easy to overlook the fact that over 95% of a</p><p>typical worker bee’s life is spent within the confines of the colony engaged in</p><p>some activity in or on the combs. In a sense the combs are an extension of</p><p>the bees that made them and it is bees and combs together that constitute</p><p>the colony.</p><p>Up until about 1850 bee colonies whether wild of under human stewardship</p><p>(it hardly qualified as management) built themselves a set of combs entirely</p><p>according to their own design in whatever cavity they could find or was</p><p>provided by the beekeeper. No restriction was placed on the way the colony</p><p>used these combs to engage in their main activities of brood rearing and food</p><p>storage. With the introduction of the moveable frame hive followed quickly by</p><p>the invention of wax foundation and the queen excluder everything changed.</p><p>Beekeepers were now able to induce the bees to make their combs where</p><p>they (the beekeepers) wanted them ie in wooden frames. The beekeeper</p><p>could now even influence the size of cells they built by the dimensions of the</p><p>hexagon embossed on the sheet of wax. It also became possible to separate</p><p>the use of combs for brood rearing and honey storage using a queen excluder.</p><p>Some of the changes that modern beekeeping has imposed on colonies have</p><p>potential effects on the health and welfare of the bees and others do not.</p>