While the "proof" offered in this thread is more "argument" than actual
proof, there is tangible evidence that one can examine in the form of old
foundation mills.  A collection of these old mills exists at the Ohio State
University facility at Wooster, OH, a part of the "Bee Museum" collection.

I neglected to bring my calipers with me when I last visited, but I asked
Dave Heilman (who worked at the facility with Jim Tew until budget cuts
eliminated the funding for his post) about this specific issue, and he stated
that the old mills in their collection did have smaller cell sizes than the
foundation currently sold by the beekeeping supply houses.

Anyone who is interested could likely contact Jim Tew and gain access
to the equipment to measure the cell sizes, and maybe even run some
wax through the old mills.

Ohio State can't be the only collection of old beekeeping gear on the planet,
so there may be other artifacts scattered about.

So, the question of what foundation cell sizes were used in the USA
in years past can be answered with authority, and I leave it to someone in
Ohio to confirm Dave's statement with some hard numbers.

I am not taking a stance in the discussion one way or the other, except
to mention that any/all participants might do well to recall Trofim Denisovich
Lysenko's career, the basic concept of the chromosome, and the concept
of "regression to the mean".

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