I also have a range of sizes of worker bees in some of my hives. These are hives in which I have allowed the bees to draw their own comb without the use of foundation.  My impression is that they are doing better than those on conventionally drawn comb, but of course my sample is too small and uncontrolled for this to be anything more than anecdote and observation.  Maybe, if a few hundred of the people reading this do the same and report results, we could do some science!

My simple method is to cut out the dark comb from brood frames of hives that are not known to have health problems, leaving a 'footprint' around the edge to persuade the bees to build the new comb within the frames.

Measurement of cell size on my top bar hive shows that the bees have larger cells at the front and the rear of the hive than in the middle and that across each comb the cells are smaller in the middle than at the periphery.

Chris





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