Dee said:
>The cell size also then influences the flight of the honeybee and its
speed, through changes in aerodynamics relative to the density of the bees
body...

Dee is very right.  Although the bee changes scale, the air does not change
density.

Dick said:
> ... A smaller bee would have a smaller body
> and smaller wings. A larger bee would have a larger body with larger
wings.
> Wouldn’t the wing load per unit area be the same?

No.

The assumption is often made that where cell space or nutrition is greater
or less that the resulting bees simply scale up or down in size and that the
ratio of all linear dimensions between a big unrestrained bee and a smaller
less well-fed or space-restricted bee would be the same for all body parts.
It does not take much thought to see that this assumption is very suspect.
Why would everything be exactly the same only bigger or smaller?

Even if that were true, consider this area increases as the *square* of
linear change.  Volume and mass change as the *cube*.  Thus body mass
increases much faster than the wing area with size increase.  What this
means interms of lift, I have just enough engineering background to realize
that I don't have a clue, and that I must wonder hard about anyone who
claims to know, since the movements of bees wings are complex and there are
enough vague factors that interract to make the problem almost unsolveable
and definitely unguessable.  Moreover, we have no way of guessing whether
nature has compensating mechanisms in how the various body parts scale up
and down in response to nutrition and pupal constriction..

> Does changing the size of a bee somehow change it’s relative density?

Apaprently, according to an Egyptian study that Dee showed me, in which bees
were raised in different sizes of cells.

> Is a large cow somehow more dense than a small cow?

Good question.  If it is important to know, maybe ask on COW-L.

allen
http://www.internode.net/honeybee/diary/