Hive Cleanliness

[luvin honey]

I have 2 topbar hives. One is spotless. I have seen them scrubbing their front porch! There is nothing on the hive floor.

My other hive is quite messy. Wax cappings, bee legs, even some tree debris that fell in during the last inspection.

Is this what is being referred to when people talk about bees with "hygienic traits"? Is this genetic? Who decides how clean to keep the hive--queen or workers? Or is it just the fact that this hive has a lot of TV-watching, pot-bellied, overweight drones? ;)

[Cockatoo]

I have 2 topbar hives. One is spotless. I have seen them scrubbing their front porch! There is nothing on the hive floor.

My other hive is quite messy. Wax cappings, bee legs, even some tree debris that fell in during the last inspection.

Is this what is being referred to when people talk about bees with "hygienic traits"? Is this genetic? Who decides how clean to keep the hive--queen or workers? Or is it just the fact that this hive has a lot of TV-watching, pot-bellied, overweight drones? ;)

My friend Ralph calls sloppy lazy hives, Democrats.  :-D
Especially when all they do is wait to be fed and store nothing for the winter.

[Bee-Bop]

Hygienec traits are generally refered to as the bees cleaning themselves & other hive mates {mites etc }also removeing dead / sick brood from the hive.

I don't think most beekeepers call it sweeeping out and dusting the hive.

Have you read any beekeeping books lately, and visited/joined your local beeclub ?

Bee-Bop

[Natalie]

Hygenic traits are usually referred to how much the bees groom themselves and other bees.
They also will pull the dead or sick larvae out of the cells and throw them outside the hives or sometimes on the bottom board.
Some bees have been bred specifically for this trait, such as the minnesota hygenics.
I believe all bees will do this to a point but some more than others.
Hygenic bees will pick the mites off of each other while they groom and are better for mite control.
I have minnesota hygenics but I also have some russians that are very hygenic.
I think the bottom boards can be a good indicator of how hygenic they are.

As for keeping the hive clean, it could be related to the size and age of the colony.  
The house cleaners are the young bees, its the first job a bee has after hatching, they clean out their cells and then are the hive housekeepers for a couple of days.
Not that other bees won't remove dead bees from the hive but I don't know how much house work they do.
It may be that the pieces of tree that fell in are too big for them to move.
The hive that is spotless may be that they are not cleaning out the cells or grooming eachother as much as the other one that has stuff on the bottom of the hive.
Also, in lang hives they drop debris down as they clean and it ends up on the bottom board which we pull out and clean.

Topbar hives that don't have screened or pull out trays in the bottom are going to end up with more debris on the bottom of the hives.
I use a small hand broom and just push the dropped pollen and wax pieces out the front door when I do an inspection on my topbar hives.

[Michael Bush]

A lot of it has to do with the strength of the hive and the current priority that they have focused on.  A strong hive sooner or later gets around to cleaning house.  A weak hive seldom does.

[luvin honey]

Thanks. I had thought hygienic referred to the grooming, cell cleaning, but I wondered as my one hive got more cluttered. The cluttered hive also happens to be the one in which I have seen bees grooming each other....

Thanks for the suggestion on reading books. I read a lot this winter, but there are so many details to beekeeping that I find I lose a lot of the details. Summer is so chaotic that I turn to this forum while working online to get those answers I want more quickly :) I look forward to spending a lot more time reading again about bees this winter again.