Peter:
 In Siberia where both species are kept together, [varroa]
infested A. mellifera colonies and became a sever pest to
the unadapted host.

Reply:
Actually the Apis mellifera colonies did fine up until the
1960s thereabouts in remembering, living side by side quite
well up until then. The change then was made to new comb in
the 1960s of the Apis mellifera colonies to bigger by the
way and problems slowly started, and it was also about this
time that apis mellifera bees from this area were brought
back to the EU area.



continuing:
In consequence of the smaller body size, the cell diameter
of the worker comb is smaller than the European races
(4.7-4.9 mm). 

Reply:
Here one has to read the paper and note specific races vs
lumping of of races as European races, besides the fact
that many mediterranean bees are within this size range,
along with those closer to sea level in western coastal
areas according to texts in Bee World by various authors. 

continuing:
 (I know, it's a chicken and egg thing)

Reply:
Yes it is in a way. For you can only upsize or downsize
about .2mm to .3mm each changeout up or down and it was
decided way back in the early 1900s to upsize while
selecting for bigger queens to to lock the sizings in. For
those interested in reading more start with the Paris
beekeeping conference in about 1933/34 internationally and
continune from there in archives of Bee World, though other
source are avail also. 

* Here he sets it down, the Carniolans are naturally a
bigger race. Of course, size varies from region to region,
and perhaps from hive to hive and even within the hive.
These measurements have to be done scientifically and
subjected to statistical analysis. 

Reply:
Yes, the sizing broke down into small, medium and large and
the small end is in line or smaller then 4.9mm by the way.

Problem is when you cut off the small end you cut off quite
a bit of variability when problems arise as we have
today.You cannot just stay with large, or small even. YOu
really need to take a middle ground, go to ground zero, and
stabalize and then let the bees decide direction to take,
which is why we regressed size down in stages and when we
hit middle ground, with 4.9mm size problems stopped. Our
secondary diseases cleared up, meaning back to 1-2% levels
as we were living day to day with varroa prior to on 5.0mm
to 5.1mm sizing but secondary diseases were getting to us
from about year 7-8 on and knew we had to fine tool more.
So decision was made to go to 4.9mm and begin retooling
down all over again for the difference of .1mm to .2mm and
that is small differnce for so much work. But then the
secondary diseases cleared up also. We start year 11 this
coming by the way...... on the 4.9mm

Regards,

Dee

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