>*  Over the past century, domestic bees in North America and Europe,
>    and parts of the world that follow their lead have been selected for
>    increased size
>*  Selection took place by 'eyeball' evaluation of queens and by deliberate
>    propagation of bees that did well on man-made foundation.
>*  Foundation sizes increased over that period, and the bees that did best
>    on the larger cells naturally continued to dominate both through survival
>    and deliberate human selection.
>*  Some of this selected gene pool could function well on both the larger
>    cells and on smaller cells -- even down to the bottom of the range that
>    was reported before foundation was introduced.  Some could not.

The size of queen bees has never been correlated to the size of the
worker. The size of the workers was never evaluated by breeders and
it has never been shown that *any* bees did poorly on this foundation
and were therefore weeded out. That is pure conjecture.

The ratio of "selected" bees to non-selected has always been small.
The majority of queen bees are freely mated with drones from hundreds
of unknown sources. Any real genetic change in the characteristics of
honey bees requires natural or artificial isolation.

>*  The EHB natural range reportedly went as low as 4.9 mm, although 4.9
>    was at the extreme low end of the range observed.  The median was
>    somewhere in the region of 5.1 to 5.2 mm, as I recall, and ranged
>    from about 4.9 to 5.4.  (The exact numbers are not all that important
>    here, so please bear with me)

I think they are important. Crane gives the range of European honey
bees as 5.1 to 5.5 and the median at 5.3. Our friend from Europe
reports that bees raised in skeps average 5.3. Marla Spivak reports
that bees raised in box hives in Costa Rica average 5.3. Crane gives
the range of scutellata at 4.7 to 4.9 and the Africanized bees at 4.5
to 5.0. With these figures there is no overlap.

>Others, elsewhere in North America and Europe are attempting to replicate
>the work with standard off-the-shelf EHB, with varying success.


Who? I have not seen anybody submit any results of any study where
there is a side by side comparison of bees on large cells and small
cells. Most of the people that are using small cell foundation, at
least the ones who have talked about it on this forum, are trying to
convert all the hives, on the assumption that it will work.

Furthermore, it is the Lusby's contention that the bees have to be
"retrogressed" to a small size. I don't see how the idea that
European bees were somehow smaller than they are now can ever be
proved. One would have to do careful measurements on specimens
collected a hundred years ago. Perhaps there are such specimens, but
I am afraid that the people capable of doing such work do not see any
real justification for it.

There are a least two reasons why this theory could not be receiving
attention of mainstream scientists. 1) They are prejudiced against
non-traditional approaches. 2) They believe is lacking in merit.


--
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>