Hi all on Bee-l

Robert Brenchley wrote:
    Have you measured them for comparison? Ruttner, Milner
& Dews reported in'The Dark European Honey Bee' that the
size of the forewing in A.m.m. found in archaeological digs
dating from about 800 and 1000 years ago were similar
to those of modern bees, presumably raised on large
foundation. Does the wing size change as the bees are
downsized.

Reply:
Well, it certainly changed as they were upsized on
artificial foundation Robert.

Please see page 76, May 1928 "Bee World" Archiv fur
Bienenkunde, which says: "From larger cells, the bees have
larger fore-wings and wider terga' but the number of the
hamuli in not affected."

Also roy Grout did a thesis on "The Influence of Size of
Brood Cell Upon the Size of the Worker Bee"  that was
published in Research Bulletin 218, June 1937 as " The
INfluence of Size of Brood Cell Upon the Size and
variability fo the Honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) in Ames
Iowa, in which he stated that "our data substantiate those
of Michailov which show that an increase in teh size of
brood cells is accompanied by a corresponding increase in
the weight, length of right forewing, width of right
forewing, sum of widths of third and fourth tergits and
length of proboscis.

A Shorter version of this publication was also published in
ABJ pages 178-180 April 1936 and Table 1 there and
accompanying grafts give percentages for increase over
three cell sizes of increasing size he used in his
experiments on this subject matter. So you can see how much
the length and width do change with cell size.

To not see the changes I would tend to think that Ruttner
maybe was using feral colonies not on enlarged combs maybe.
What do you feel?

Regards,

Dee A. Lusby



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - sign up for Fantasy Baseball
http://sports.yahoo.com