Has anyone heard of Rudolf von Schumacher's 20/30 method?

Hello everyone

On one Belgian and two Dutch beekeeping web sites I read about a beekeeping method being pioneered by the Swiss beekeeper Rudolf von Schumacher, called something like "the 20/30 minute method", in which the beekeeper spends no more than 20 or 30 minutes of time per hive per year, the the same or greater yield as more time-consuming methods. However, I find no other mention of this method anywhere else on the web. Apparently thousands of beekeepers worldwide are testing the method and reporting their results.

Has anyone here ever heard of this method or this experiment? I don't exclude the possibility that the method may have seen some press coverage in e.g. in beekeeping magazines without online archives.

Thanks
Samuel

Varroa?

Seems it arose circa 2000 - 2004 with articles in the German magazine Die Biene... Hohenheim University tried it with mixed results but over a difficult spring. It sounds like a pre-emptive split or rearrangement is made to foil swarming.

Try googling with and without the 'von', and with 'halb stunde' or '30 minuten' and a few things surface. 'volk' means colony in this context, I believe, if you're relying on automatic translations...

DanBee said:

It sounds like a pre-emptive split or rearrangement is made to foil swarming.

Click to expand...

Yes, the descriptions that I have show that two double brood box hives are stacked and later merged into a single quad brood box and then the stacking order of the boxes are changed at certain times, and position and opening of the entrance also changes (all four boxes have entrance holes).

Anyway, I discovered how to find loads of information about the method:

Go to http://www.diebiene.de/archiv and select "Schumacher, v R" from the author dropdown list, and do a keyword-less search on that. You won't be able to read the magazine articles unless you're a subscriber, but you can google for the magazine article titles and then get quite a few relevant off-site hits on those.

The study seems to have been done by Schumacher and Dr Gerhard Liebig. I found their e-mail addresses and wrote them each a short letter. Keep em peeled.

Samuel

ugcheleuce said:

The study seems to have been done by Schumacher and Dr Gerhard Liebig. I found their e-mail addresses and wrote them each a short letter.

Click to expand...

Today, Dr Liebig wrote back:

It was no sucess. Final report only in German.
Gruß
Gerhard Liebig

I have no idea what the name of the report is, nor where it can be found on the internet (if at all).

Samuel