Barry Sergeant wrote: > 3. All my colonies are started on strip foundation. I have just measured > worker brood cells near the bottom of brood frames, that is, cells > furthest from the foundation strip. These "natural" cells range between > 4.878 and 4.762mm. > Hi Barry, I might be all wrong about this, when I have very limited experience of Scutellata bees. It's from a visit in the south of Africa (Mocambique) some years ago. I found the Scutellata bees to be smaller than the European bees. My estimation was around 10% difference in size. This also affected the behaviour of the bees; they were much quicker. One example of this was the absence of landing board on the hives. The bees were flying straight in and out of the entrance at a speed you hardly saw them. So from my point of view it seems logic that they make smaller cells to fit their body size. If I compare with the 5,3 mm we are using here, 10% less will be what you have. -- Regards P-O Gustafsson, Sweden [log in to unmask] http://www.algonet.se/~beeman/