The ongoing thread about bee space  can be placed
into perspective reading a few articles published by
"Bee Culture". (http://bee.airoot.com/beeculture/)

In 1995, they ran an article named "Bee Space?  Or
Space For Bees?", showing that "comb spacing" (and
hence, the definition of the ranges of acceptable "bee space")
is in need of massive clarification.  Sadly, it was apparently ignored.

This year, they ran an article named "Woodenware II", a
review of all available "store bought" woodenware, where
bee space compatibility was checked between all current
vendors of supers, hive bodies, and frames.

The results showed that most equipment is incompatible,
and some is incompatible with everything, including more
of itself.

If even the people who make woodenware for a living can't
"get it right", one must conclude that we have divergent
points of view, all with some claim on being "right".

The way such issues are settled in engineering is to negotiate
a standard, and encourage vendors to comply with the standard.
The "encouragement" most often takes the form of a logo that the
vendors can use to show that their products comply with standards,
and are hence, "compatible" and "standards compliant".

You may think that this sort of effort would be a silly waste
of time, but think for a moment about all the complex hardware
and software that allows you to read this message.  If every bit
of it was not "standards compliant", you would not have Bee-L
to read, and the internet simply would not exist.  (Check out the
acronyms ASTM, EIA, IEEE, and RFC on a search engine to
see just how many standards there are for everything from nuts
and bolts to encrypted data streams.)

So, who wants to participate in drafting a proposed set of
standards?  Anyone?