Hi all

Waldemar wrote:
Ihave one question: has Dee or anyone else observed a swarm
from a 4.9 mm colony escape into the wild and start a feral
colony whose average wild cell turned out to be 4.9 mm ?
My interest is in knowing if the 4.9 mm size becomes
permanent with bees once they have been downsized or do
bees upsize to some size slightly above 5.0 mm despite
having been downsized previously.

Reply:
Yes, I have seen this and it is permanently smaller and in
fact the bees will then even go into the 4.8 range. But 4.9
controls the mite and secondary disese problem in
commercial hives and still allows for easy extraction with
modern conviences.

The answer to this question might shed some light on the
allegedly natural nature of the 4.9 mm size.

Reply:
This is true! Also you can read of others seeing this in
the "Making Cell Calls" of the bulletin board forum of the
www.beesouce.com site by Mr Barry Birkey.

Chow:

Dee A. Lusby

Waldemar


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