Hi Peter & all

First I wish to state that I am not convinced that cellsize is the magic
bullet that some suggest it is.

However I do not believe that Steve Martin's paper goes into the detail far
enough.

> reducing cell sizes as a mite control
> method will probably fail to be effective since the bees are likely
> to respond by rearing correspondingly smaller bees

Yes, the bees rear smaller workers in the smaller cells, but the relation
between worker thorax size and cell size is not linear...

Please do not take the following list of sizings as perfect, but I have
clipped them from some personal mail.

Clip>
There is a mathematical relationship between cellsize and the dorsal-ventral
depth of a bee's thorax (exactly what the formula of this relationship is...
Is contentious and not properly understood yet as it varies a bit from race
to race).

A bee produced in a 5.45 mm cell has a thorax of 4.3 mm depth.

A bee produced in a 5.1 mm cell has a thorax of 4.18 mm depth

A bee produced in a 5.00 mm cell has a thorax of 4.15 mm depth

A bee produced in a 4.83 mm cell has a thorax in the region of  4.1 mm depth
Clip>

The above seems to indicate a very rapid reduction in the space available
within a cell as cell size diminishes. I consider this needs further study
and should not be written off so lightly as Peter suggests.


Best Regards & 73s... Dave Cushman, G8MZY
Beekeeping & Bee Breeding Website...
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman