Hi Todd and Everyone,

>I've been making the same observations in my TBH's.... I haven't
noticed any difference in worker size, though now I will pay a bit more
attention.

I'm a small cell beekeeper and thought I could easily spot the different
cell sizes. With foundation the bees make all kinds of transitional cells
but not so in the tbh. The comb is taper so gradually that I initially
missed it.

>I have laid down under my TBH's and watched through the varroa screen -
fascinating.

Now that's neat! But I bet my wife would think I was sleeping :>) Humm,
might be a good place to get an undisturbed nap. :>)

>The way the bees draw comb seems quite different than with foundation.
Rather than working in a narrow
vertical mass between sheets of foundation, they tend to form a large
ball, covering three or four top bars at a time, working vertically.  The
shape of the emerging combs is like bleachers; staggered in size with age
&
development.

Same, observations. Yet the bees can change their focus from a more
horizontal approach to a more vertical approach and still maintain the
nest organization in three dimensions.

>It also seems that the bees will draw comb more willingly from a top bar
as opposed to foundation (although that may be my imagination).

It's not your imagination. I have tried to get small cell foundation
drawn and it's a pain at best. Large cell foundation is really quite easy
to get drawn by comparison. But when the bees do it by themselves in my
tbh, it makes the large cell foundation look as hard to get drawn out as
is the small cell by comparison.

Others have reported the same.

>After a month, I can see no difference in colony size between those
manipulated, and those not.  In
fact, it appears that the hives that I have "left the hell alone" seem to
be
doing a little better than those I've routinely inspected, etc.  The bees
seem to know much better than I where everything belongs...

My humbling experience also. I coming to the conclusion that if we
managed our cars like we manage our bees, routinely pulling the engine
apart, and exchanging or rotating parts, there would be alot of dead or
poorly running cars. Yet I bet it's alot easier to understand the
workings of a car that man built than it is to understand the biology of
a bee.

Regards
Dennis
Regards,

Dennis.

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