- Joined
- Sep 4, 2011
- Messages
- 5,357
- Reaction score
- 4,848
- Location
- Wiveliscombe
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 24
But we can't possibly emulate the way bees would do it. We will also not know how inclined to use propolis our bees are. But if the bees are healthy and have a need to propolise something, unless we have chosen to breed that urge out of them, they will propolise the beehive themselves.
I understand your point and I think it raises a number of questions about what the "natural" behaviour of honey bees is when we're keeping them in an unnatural environment (ie. a hive) in the first place. Should we expect them to behave in the same way when they're nesting in a tree trunk, for example?
Where people are keeping and breeding from their own stock, can we be sure that a line that has been kept in wooden hives for, say, thirty years, will want to behave the same way as a line that has been kept in poly hives for the same amount of time? And if they don't, in what ways might they differ?
I have no answers, but I think we need to keep in mind that once we start to change their environment, they many no longer behave in the ways that we assume they would.
James