Bill
Actually no Bill for what you wrote in assumption.
They don't really go that big in most places except in
honey cells, nor that small except in brood cells,and
extremes seen doesn't necessarily mean good either. For
then Nature culls out those that don't do well, as with
bigger that don't fit one's local area acclimitization has
to be done, and following the bees; and those that cannot
adjust properly are then lost on the evolutionary chain, as
parasites, and predators, and secondary diseases come in,
to get rid of what doesn't fit! Same with smaller. 

This is why beekeepers have to be careful to not go too far
in either direction and get out of tune with their
honeybees.

Sizing up was definitely done and how? Well, to resay from
the 1965 era of Romania..." Experiments with a large cell
honey-comb in the conditions of the Socialist Republic of
Romania (5.65mm) show that a large scale introduction of
such honey-combs represents an important reserve for the
increase of the bee-hive's productivity in all sectors. To
this aim it is necessary taht the honey-comb should be
build up first - during intense harvesting - in other
colonies or in the respective colonies for honey-storage,
and only afterwards it should be used for broodrearing."
This unfortunately is what happened in the USA and
elsewhere. Combs drawnout in honeysupers were interchanged
into broodnests over time with many beekeepers not attuned
to what was actually happening...

What this says.....and happened.......is that honey
storage/drone cells were then fed into the broodnests to
size up our honey bees.......and this was carried out
worldwide in the quest for more honey production by
countries and commercial beekeepers....but actually it was
not! It was a red-herring trick on our poor honeybees! How?
By optical illusion to us beekeepers. For you get less bees
in a broodnest then, that have to expand out using more
equipment to get same numbers of honeybees to do the work,
and then in needing one cell of honey, one cell of pollen
to also make a bee, it requires more equipment for honey 
storage, that WE THEN TAKE perceiving more honey, because
we got more bees, seeing more space used, which is quite
the opposite from what is really going on. Then on top of
it we start getting out of balance with Nature and
pests/parasites come in and problems then started 
like chalk brood, and foul broods across a spectrum,
besides the mites and SHB now in mass expanding and more
threatening.

Yet, to get smaller you then have to feed into the
broodnest to size down, by drawing combs in the area you
actually want to work with them. Then of course you can
take the smaller and smaller and use to go to extremes
also. But thankfully bees left alone swarm out and restart
new homes and adjust to what they want. So today many
swarms come out of beekeepers colonies and in the feral
state start regressing for what they want. Probably in the
future they will swarm out and if too small will probably
start retro-gressing bigger for want of another word to go
slightly bigger to fit their local areas for
acclimitization.......

Mainly, what we need to do is simply follow the bees' needs
to come to a harmonious state where they are happy and
healthy and leave it be. Perhaps this is why we only
regressed down in steps to finally come to middle ground in
the spectrum of natural cell sizes, and didn't use cell
walls to see what the bees themselves wanted to do. 
Then once regressed down, and with retrogression in
breeding undoing the multi-complex bees established in ones
area, you let them be and simply follow the bees so if they
want to go slightly smaller you let them and/or slightly
bigger you let them, for in each area you get small,
medium, and large caste bees in all breakouts of workers, 
queens, and drones that then gives you local variability to
work with for managing your bees in both breeding and
production.

As to size north to south Alpatov wrote in 1929 (not 1920)
that there is a variance of 2% for each degree of latitiude

thereabouts, and this is like splitting hairs in a way for
the minute smallness in size difference it really is. Also
it means that 4.7mm in the mediterranean area would to get
to 4.8mm take several latitudes all the way up to the
Nordic states to pass the 60th parallel, and is why the
variation of comb is not that great as perceived/spoken
about. Mainly it is the differece in worker vs drone 
that is perceived instead by most beekeepers which is a
wrong assumption!!!

In the end, to survive with food production we as
beekeepers will have to learn to follow the bees and their
needs, not ours if we are to eat! Other then that get out
the paint brushes for food pollenation.

Also, I really want to thank Predarg for his courage to
post updates since the 1960s that many of us have had no
access to, so more information can be put into the puzzle
so we can solve problems our bees are facing, and talk 


Respectfully submitted,

Dee A. Lusby
Small Cell Commercial Beekeeper
Moyza, Arizona
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/organicbeekeepers/



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