Oh sorry, one of my friends who IS a beekeeper actually asked me the same question, I guess it's a Greg-ism I've heard so much lately I've forgotten is just a Gregism.
He insists that when you pull out a frame or push a frame back in to a beehive, there is a likelihood (which he asserts to be near a certainly) that the queen will be caught between the frames and "rolled" and crushed to death.
Bees are sometimes crushed in this manner, but realistically the average number of bees killed per takign a frame out and putting it back in is probably, I don't know, .7. Let's say you're really sloppy and kill 2.5 bees every time you remove a frame. A hive has an equilibrium population of 60,000, so that's a 0.004% chance that one of the 2.5 bees killed is the queen. I forget how to multiply probabilities but I'm pretty certain the odds don't improve to a very likely number until a huge number of frames are involved.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-12-05 11:50 am (UTC)He insists that when you pull out a frame or push a frame back in to a beehive, there is a likelihood (which he asserts to be near a certainly) that the queen will be caught between the frames and "rolled" and crushed to death.
Bees are sometimes crushed in this manner, but realistically the average number of bees killed per takign a frame out and putting it back in is probably, I don't know, .7. Let's say you're really sloppy and kill 2.5 bees every time you remove a frame. A hive has an equilibrium population of 60,000, so that's a 0.004% chance that one of the 2.5 bees killed is the queen. I forget how to multiply probabilities but I'm pretty certain the odds don't improve to a very likely number until a huge number of frames are involved.