waldemar,
When we did this we had already gone thru first regression down to 5.0mm - 5.1mm sizing for 8 years. This information should be in the archives here fwiw. The bees were living with varroa but secondary diseases were eating us alive and costing commercial crop, and making us requeen spring and fall by year 8. So we decided to fine tune further, rationallizing that on a clean sustainable system there shouldn't be seondary diseases, as the bees should be in a healthy harmony with nature. 

So what does this mean then? Well, if now going down from 5.4mm to 4.9mm over the course of one year, you need to watch things close. But also, now there are more products on the market for faster regression down too, so you don't have to fight the comb drawwing out with culling so much, to get the bees down ASAP, and then stabilized. I am not talking mann lake small 4.95 which is too close to 5.0mm for me (might be okay canada due to latitude though). I am talking using the new HSC Honey Super Cell fully drawnout plastic comb. For getting the bees on it 100% and downsized in about 90 days means a lot starting in the spring, so the bees have the whole year then to work up with smaller bees, and then fed in around the HSC later comes the wax 4.9mm and/or foundationless, though for commercial doing, foundation is better due to extracting.

But in the beginning there weren't others out there. Just stupid us and wanting others to follow which many didn't want to do and still don't. So we adapted helping each other and cried when others were put down so to speak. Now there are plenty around and SC queens and nucs and other to be had. But it's been an uphill battle and will probably still go on for years yet..........but numbers are growing and there are SC beekeepers in all states now and growing. 

So if you find ferals now 5.0mm or smaller be happy, for they have already gone thru the first regression part so you don't have to. So you have good odds on getting to 4.9mm size right off. Many parts of the USA are like this now with locals doing small cell size now more and more. Though there are still areas with LC commercial dominating where spheres of influence still are, but numbers are reducing yearly now due to die offs.

Dee A. Lusby




      

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