Crushing bees weakens colony strength

Another article worth reading from Randy Oliver’s scientificbeekeeping.com:

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/does-the-crushing-of-bees-affect-colony-health/

 

He poses the question, found in the URL above, “Since I couldn’t find a single controlled study in which the effects of the crushing of bees in the hive was clearly determined, I decided to use some of your donations to run a trial…”  and the short answer to his bit of direct research is ‘yes, in winter’.

Control colonies with no crushed bees were stronger after the study ended than colonies where bees were crushed.  Colony strength only diverged in the winter however…