Hey Bee-l,

I was flipping through an old ABJ this afternoon and I found a summary of a study conducted by the USDA:

Harbo, J. R.  1991.  Effect of cell size on quantity of brood and weight of worker bees.  Am Bee J 131: 776

Summary:
Small colonies (bees covering 3-frames, @ 6,000 workers), of roughly equal size, were established on colonies containing either; 1) 711 cells per sq decimeter (6 colonies) or 2) 857 cells per sq decimeter (a natural sized foundation) (9 colonies).  A second experiment was conducted where an even smaller cell size (1004 cells per sq dm) (4 colonies) was compared to the largest cell size (711 cells per sq dm) (4 colonies).

'Colonies compensated for the large cells be increasing their brood area to maintain about the same number of broodcells.  Colonies with larger cells (711 cells per sq dm) poroduced larger areas of brood than colonies with smaller cells (857 cells per sq dm), but the two groups never differed in the number of brood cells.

Larger cells produced larger bees.  The difference between worker bees from the large and medium sized cells was 6mg (113 and 107 mg) in the first experiment.  The difference between workers from the largest and smallest cells in experiment 2 was 11 mg (117 and 106mg)'

I imagine there are other studies investigating the effect of cell size on a variety of colony properties, if someone spent a little time looking.  The implications, in terms of colony productivity, of having smaller workers, has also probably been looked at experimentally.

Regards
Adony

Adony Melathopoulos
Apiculture Biotechnologist
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Beaverlodge Research Farm
Box CP 29
Beaverlodge, Alberta CANADA
T0H 0C0

T +1 780 354 5130
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