Hi Chris & all

> Will not the natural environment in which the bees exist in
>  our hypothetical village provide the impetus for quantum
>  creep?  This, of course, is on the assumption that Dee is
>  right and that currently bees are unnaturally larger
> than intended and are disadvantaged by this.

Whatever pressures there are from the environment, your hypothetically
isolated bees are influenced by the cellsize in comb that previous
generations have made.

To eliminate this influence you would need to cull all existing combs every
year and continue to do this for many years... Look up *Helmholz Equation*
on a search engine and you will get an idea of the shape of the adaptation
curve. The less the difference the longer it takes.

Even with annual culling I can see it taking twenty or more years to reduce
the influence of the cellsize, that existed before the experiment started,
to 5% ie. 95% re-adapted.

The cellsize produced by a given generation of bees is thus a straight
jacket that holds that cellsize more or less constant until an influence
comes along.

I do not know what cellsize is 'natural' for any given race of bee and I am
now suspicious that what has been recorded and published in the distant past
has been supplanted by more recent recording, without due regard for any
possible mechanisms that may be distorting the 'facts'.

The work done about 20 years ago, by Steve Taber, using blown glass
queencell cups in different sizes showed that the optimum was 12%  larger
than all the wax
cups used at the turn of the previous century, I do not think that all those
that experimented with wax cups got it wrong, but that they got it right for
their bees in their timeframe. I think Steves work merely shows what was
right in his timeframe. and that the difference is a good lead to show what
has happened to foundation sizes inbetween times.


Best Regards & 73s... Dave Cushman, G8MZY
Beekeeping & Bee Breeding Website...
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman