Lionel asked some good questions.
We have been with our bees a long time thru 2 regressions
down, watching and following our bees' needs. Then making
corrective changes to accommodate them for commercial
purposes.
Beeswax foundation does not thicken with cell walls as
fast as some suppose/think. And many old combs I/we have
looked at in melting down our operation in past years
(80s/90s and still melting by the way) went all the way
back to grandpa's time of beekeeping thru WWI and WWII.
Small and thickened indeed they did look, but then knowing
the various different names of the foundation styles
helped, along with manufacturer sizes then to figure out
how small they were when bought and then prior to melting.
The most on average you could/might/may go down is about
.1mm and that will take several years and there is really
no time left for that. You will not see .2mm down with
thickened walls, for long before then the bees stop the
process. It is easier to find thickened cell bottoms and
thicker bases, which has no bearing on the problem at hand
for reduced reproduction (though it might on # wax produced
or contamination # absorbed).
Yes, the cell size gets smaller with each generation of
reproduction to a point, as bees shellac and resterilize
brood cells for the queen to lay into.But only to a point
and then the cocoons and shellacing are cleaned out
periodically at broodnest cleansing times in early spring
and late fall going into winter. Here you will find, or at
least we did, as we fine tuned more, the smaller more
natural we went, the more the bees have cleaned and primed
the broodnest area, with heavy cleaning periodically twice
a year.
Was it because they knew they didn't have to thicken the
walls so much for control of problems of imbalance, or
because they had more division of labor to allow them to do
things right? Or not enough division of labor to keep them
thinned properly?
Comb is needed to be changed out now because wax absorbs
the various treatments used in the broodnest, and only
after it can no longer absorb all it can, does it leach
then into the honey. During extracting, the bits of wax
that are contaminated can be filtered out and many packers
and producers do this, but it is not like honey of old with
minute particles of beeswax and proplis and pollen still
contained. Propolis by the way, has a higher infinity for
contimination then the wax; and pollen from sprayed crops
or in contact with bees in contact with strips inserted is
IMO not good too. Comb just needs to be changed, now, as
after 3-5 years most cannot hold any more accumulation of
contaminates from all the various treatments in use today.
Foundation that is small cell, will remain small cell and
the bees for the most part will keep the cells walls
thinner and cleaned more then the bigger ones they will try
to size down. I could go into this, but not now. But it can
be read more in old writings of EB Wedmore of the UK how
the bees keep the cell walls thinned down and the
measurements even taken back then.
After a few cycles of 4.9mm brood, assuming it is drawnout
to 4.9mm sizing and not 5.0mm or even 4.8mm range. it will
still pretty much be the same as drawnout originally.
As for how many cycles does it take to be at the 4.9mm
size, well, if that referres to sizing down, then that can
take years in actuality for it took over 100 years now to
size our bees up thru several upsizings in pursuit of a
bigger better honeybee.But in reality are we better off for
it, and more importantly did we ever achieve it, all things
being considered?
Respectfully submitted,
Dee A. Lusby
Small Cell Commercial Beekeeper
Tucson, Arizona
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OrganicBeekeepers/
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then
man would only have four years of life left."
– a quotation attributed to Albert Einstein
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