Good for bees, but good for beekeepers?

摘要

"It appears that the annual cost to a colony of rearing and maintaining o crop of drones is some 35-45 pounds of honey." Modem beekeeping is based on four key inventions from the 1800s: the movable frame hive, the bellows bee smoker, the honey extractor, and comb foundation. The last of these, comb foundation, benefits beekeepers in several ways. It helps ensure that the bees build planar combs, it saves the bees much wax synthesis during comb construction, and it inhibits the bees from rearing drones, by doing away with most of a colony's drone comb. Langstroth (1866, p. 51) stated emphatlrally this third benefit of using worker comb foundation: "...the breeding of so many drones should be discouraged. Traps have been invented to destroy them, but it is much better to save the bees the labor and expense of rearing such a host of useless consumers. This can be readily done, when we have control of the comb; for by removing the drone-comb, and supplying in its place with worker-cells, the over production of drones may easily be prevented."