>>>> So 10% more brood in the same volume, brood that must be kept
>>>> warm
> QUERY: Does it take more energy for the hive to cover and protect 20
> sq cm of 5.25 cells than 20sq cm of 5.35 cells?

These are interesting questions.  At some point the brood provides some
metabolic heat, but in the early stages, the cluster must provide the
warmth.  Assuming the cluster volume is largely determined by
temperature, and that is an assumption, the number of cells covered will
be dependent on the cell density on the comb and also the comb spacing.

Some reduce the comb spacing to the minimum that bees can manage by
shaving the frame shoulders, but this requires extremely flat combs.

That said, we ran both nine and ten frame spacing for years and never
could see any difference in performance.  The nine frame spacing was
easier to manipulate and required fewer moving parts per hive, but also
meant that two storey brood chambers were necessary.  We were running 
doubles at that time anyhow.  (Funny how fashions change).

If less brood is raised early due to larger cells and wider spacing,
that does not necessarily translate into poorer performance as resources
are conserved until the weather is more favourable.

We see what this pent-up capacity can mean in terms of build-up when we
observe hives that have had a queenless period and then get a new queen
laying.

Oftentimes, when we observed hives split in two -- one half with the
original queen laying steadily and the other being queenless 20 days --
we saw that by the end of the season the half with the new later queen 
would catch up and surpass the half that had a queen the whole time. 
People might attribute that to the new queen, but we must remember that 
each nurse bee can only feed so many larva in a lifetime and that can be 
a limiting factor.  It seems that that capacity can be banked during 
queenlessness and employed when the new queen gets going.

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