Serg wrote:
>
>
> Hi, Bernhard! Have you understood how Oscar refreshes the old combs in
> his hives?
>

The comb in the broodnest is untouched, so no refreshing at all. While
modern beekeeping stresses to refresh the comb, older reports show that
some combs have been used for a lifetime, at least for 10 or more years.


The comb is a very important part of a colony, because most time of a
honeybee's life is spent on it. It not only takes the stores, is a brood
chamber and reaction chamber for fermentative processes (i.e. bee
bread), is used for vibrational messages - but is also used for chemical
messages.

Those chemical messages are actually stored into the wax - just as
messages are stored into a brain. So the comb maybe some sort of brain
of the superorganism. Another thing is, that hormones produced by
microbes could be stored into the comb.

So what is continual refreshing doing? It resets the brain all over the
time, so there is just a very short term memory.
What is the shuffeling around of comb doing? It alters the memory or
confuses the bees?


As I statet earlier somewhere, the seasonal input of nectar and pollen
leaves patterns of scents inside the nest of the honeybee. So there is a
nectar and pollen calender imprinted into the comb. Maybe the bees of
the next season actually read this calendar to plan harvest and
reproduction?

Anyway, there is a lot about comb functions we don't know about.


Why is dark comb a taboo today? Maybe the upcoming of illnesses caused
the beekeeper to find a scapegoat. Instead of a wrong hive or bad
treatment, the spreading of "pathogens" through dark comb are made
responsible for the outbreak of diseases.


Very interesting indeed. Maybe it is time to let the superorganism bees
brain become adult again.


Oscar - why are all the ancient hives, being skeps, drums or board hives
are so small? I can't remember seeing a hive that is so huge.
Even the log hives here, are smaller in size:

http://www.ruchetronc.fr/ruche_tronc.php?mn=12

http://www.ruchetronc.fr/ruche_tronc.php?mn=9


Bernhard