Well, I see we have strayed far from the vexing question, back towards more 
familiar and comfortable turf.

At any rate, I hope that Dave does dig up the old work, and I am hoping that 
Bob will let me know if the changes he mentioned in bee size were linear, 
volumetric, or changes in mass.

That matters quite a lot, of course.  If the differences reported were in 
linear measurements, one would expect the volumetric or mass changes to be 
cubed and much larger than it appears at first glance.  If they were in 
volume or in mass, then the linear change should be related by the cube root 
and hence much smaller.

> The most interesting experiments in this area were done by Dennis Murrill, 
> who found that cell size varies with season, as does the bees size. Bees 
> were smaller in winter and larger in summer. Cell size in the brood nest 
> also varied from small to large, with the smaller cells about in the 
> center of the frame and the cells got larger the further you moved from 
> the center.

Well, I followed Dennis in real time as best I could and could not see the 
progression of thought that people now accept.  In fact, to me the reports I 
saw seemed to be changed often and retroactively.  Perhaps he has a 
consistent chronological record somewhere that I have not seen, but lacking 
that, I have some doubts and would like to see others replicate his 
observations.  Perhaps the old, real time information is archived somewhere 
on his website, but my interest waned and I have not read everything there, 
so maybe someone else has given it a critical examination.

I our outfit, we also observed that  bees were smaller over winter, but as I 
have often reported, as soon as we began supplementing protein for our bees 
in late winter, one of the first observations was that we no longer saw what 
we considered stunted bees.  I am sure that some may now argue that these 
smaller bees are somehow natural and important and that by supplementing, we 
are upsetting some balance.  We did also notice, too, though that our winter 
losses in subsequent winters went down a lot, so we feel justified.

Anyhow, to drag this back to the subject,  it has been shown that upsizing 
bees from what we normally see in our hives by using larger foundation does 
not have great success.  Some claim, though  that bees can be forced 
significantly smaller and that the effect persists for some time.

Hence the subject line of this wandering thread. 

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