> All I can say is that a few years ago, I moved a  hybrid strain from 
> standard cell (5.5mm or so) onto 5.1. I immediately started seeing cells 
> being uncapped and chewed out, and the strain had ever shown this 
> behaviour before.  I don't know what happened, but something did.

Each strain of bee has its own natural range of cell sizes which will vary 
with phenotype, nutritional and other history of the colony, season, and 
possibly other factors, and the sizes of cells will vary over the face of 
the combs and from one comb to another.  Usually that range is fairly tight.

I am not sure what strain of bee you use, but a survey I did a few years 
back http://www.honeybeeworld.com/misc/cellcount.htm showed that all 
respondents (European strains) came up with numbers over 5mm.  It seems that 
some areas of Europe had higher numbers of both natural comb and foundation.

Apparently A.I. Root, and early North American mass producer of foundation 
settled on 5.1mm after measuring many combs and later increased to 5.2mm. 
Some people have read and re-read old literature and postulated various 
things the material may or not support.

Bee researchers have travelled the world and examined bees in wild hives and 
primitive hives and reported back as to the average sizes they observe in 
those regions.

Since each strain of bee has a normal range of cell size and foundation, by 
its very nature, forces bees to build cells of one specific size, it could 
be quite suitable for one strain and not another.

Whether the effect you see is due to moving to a more appropriate size or a 
constrictive size is a question that may be hard to answer.  People have 
observed this chewing out, and some have associated it with smaller cells. 
I have observed it in Lusbys' bees.

Unfortunately, I know of no scientific examination of this question, and all 
the evidence is anecdotal, inconsistent and contentious.

Personally, I found that a 5.25 cell size outperformed 5.3 and up in a 
somewhat scientific test. so I suspect that 5.1, the original Root choice 
for foundation might very well suit many commercial strains offered these 
days.

Smaller than 5mm sizes are normally associated with AHB, but some people 
claim success with EHB on smaller cells.  Our tests were discontinued due to 
the initial mess that the bees made of small cell foundation.

So, it is interesting to hear your comments.

 

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