Brian Fredericksen wrote :
> When I see a study by Marla Spivak, Tom Seeley or one of the other dozen or so respected bee researchers on small cell I will take the claims more seriously. Finding one or two articles from someone no one has every heard of means nothing at this point.

Marla Spivak wrote in response to a report called "Breeding Varroa
Resistant Bees" in the "Bee Improvement Magazine":

> It seems from your report that you favor the cell size method for selecting bees for resistance. I will say that the "jury is still out" from my perspective. As for the Lusby's experience: I have not seen any confirmation that the Lusby's bees are actually European bees (not Africanized bees, which are very resistant to mites on their own). It is possible, although I haven't seen any good research on this, that cell size would reduce the number of total offspring the mites produce and possibly the number of female offspring. You would have to inspect 30 infested cells per colony and count the number of viable offspring.

This was done by Mia Davidsson in 1992 at the Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences. She wrote:

> Three different foundations were used, 640, 770, and 900 cells/ sq. dm. The foundations were introduced in three different colonies at the University, and the postcapping stage and the weight of the bees were compared. No difference could be found in postcapping stages between the cell sizes. Comparison of the reproduction of the mites in different cell sizes showed no significant differences if the material was divided into two groups, fertile and non fertile mother mites. There were significant differences between cell sizes in offspring composition but the results do not indicate that the reproduction of mites was substantially influenced by cell size on worker bee brood.

pb

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