>>Nature provided propolis to the bees for some good reason.

I certainly see this in the feral colonies I remove.  Bees strive for continuous comb even around rafter beams and older comb is very tough from propolis.
 
>>so the implication is that your success with no treatments has more to do with the genetics then small cell.

Dee's bees may be African.  On the other hand, Dennis Murrell (spelling!) had success with small cell and saw cell size variation centered on an average cell size smaller than standard foundation in his TBHs.  As far as I know, Dennis was not in African territory.

So we may be talking about 2 independent phenomena here.

Waldemar  

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