Dave,

>>...I think that the cell size that a bee was raised in has an influence on the cell size that it will draw when it does not have a template.

That's what I have been told, too, but I am not convinced just yet ;-).  I believe Dennis Murrell's bees in the TBHs had not been previously 'regressed.'  Perhaps Dennis can comment.

Long-time beekeepers around here say that, since the arrival of varroa, feral colonies here are from swarms escaped from beekeepers' hives.  Folks say varroa wiped out the 'original' ferals.  I like to think that varroa may have wiped out the ferals with susceptible genetics.  The ferals I see these days seem to have either genetics for a varroa-tolerant nest structure or SMR/Hygienic behavior or both.  Perhaps other factors are involved as well.

Whether these feral survivors were selected from feral or managed colonies, I cannot tell.  What I and others do see is an increase in feral colonies (judging by the increase in calls for removals which may be false as people may just be more aware/afraid of [Africanized] bees).

Well, I removed a feral colony from an eave of a house on Saturday.  It was an average feral colony - roughly 2-3 lbs of bees - for a horizontal cavity at this time of year.  They were still raising brood for overwintering.  The bee numbers were a little less than half of my strong two-deep hives (in mid-October in New York) but the honey-to-bees ratio seemed right for a successful overwintering.  The honey was above and outside the brood area which was in the smaller-sized cells at the bottom.  Above the broodnest the cells were visibly larger.   Outside of the broodnest the cells were larger and the comb thicker - up to 3" thick for the outer combs.

Comb in the broodnest varied from dark brown to pitch black indicating bees had raised brood in it for several seasons.  The outer combs were empty and not covered by bees.

The brood pattern was very tight with no signs of foulbrood or chalkbrood.  The bees looked clean - no DWS or disoriented bees.  The bees were very uniform in color - somewhere between classic Italians and classic Carniolans. The bees were very calm - I did not have to light my smoker but this is not unusual when using a bee vac and being gentle with comb removal.  I did not have to use a smoker the next day when I went to check for the queen.

I got the queen!  She's average size, healthy looking.  It's too late in the season to set-up a new hive for overwintering.  I'll install this queen in one of my hives or a fellow beekeeper's hive for evaluation.

This removal took a few hours.  I took my time to have a closer look at the nest structure, brood pattern, and made a real effort to get the queen.  All in all, my observations agree with what Dennis has reported about his TBHs.  A feral colony in an eave is very similar to a horizontal TBH.

I plan to measure the broodnest cell size to have a baseline for future benchmarking but the cell size increase upwards and outwards from the broodnest was very evident.

Waldemar
Long Island, NY

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