In message <[log in to unmask]>,
Chuck Norton <[log in to unmask]> writes
in reply to my
>James asks: Did Baudoux do his work in France?
and said
>The late Monsieur Ursmar Baudoux of
>Belgium was the first to conceive of the use of an artificial foundation
>having an enlarged cell base to increase the size of the emerging bee.
In this year, I suspect that the bees were very likely to be A.m.m. It
is too easy to neglect the influence of race and consider one result
superior or faulty as compared with another.
> In
>the year 1893 he was amazed on discovering bees from an old skep which
>were very much smaller than normal.
Without data on race, I would not be able to interpret the second part.
It might have been a type from another area adapted to a smaller size.
Certainly I have had a beekeeper from Scotland talk about having had
bees very much smaller than mine, a strain in a highland glen which he
had not seen anywhere else. I have also had a comment about how small
the bees were on a man's flowers - mine were the nearest bees. But this
last may be another effect of the different sized foundation in use in
the UK. I use 5.45mm compared with a perhaps more common 5.7mm.
--
James Kilty

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