PB
>Well, looking at Reaumur's figures, I deduced that he must have done what we do, measure ten cells and divide by ten.  He got 2 and 2 twelfths inches for ten, which I would represent as 2.17".  If this is divided by ten, I would get .217". Measuring my own natural comb, I got 2 and one eighth inches per ten, or 2.125" which I would represent as .213" per cell.  How else can you show that these two figures are different (which they are)?

Robert Mann:
Sorry, but what this list has been shown does not establish they're really different.

PB:
I agree that cells can vary as much as this on a given comb, but when a large number of cells are measured, the average appears to be quite constant. So much so, that Marla Spivak used such figures to identify the African bees ingression into Cost Rica. She distinguished this bees by a difference in cell size of .3mm, or 12 thousandths of an inch. Of course, using ten cells at a time, the difference is much easier to detect because it becomes one eighth of an inch. So, a difference of 5 or 10 thousandths may be quite significant, enough to differentiate the different sub-species. If I was finding comb that was consistently 1/8" per ten cells smaller, I would suspect African bees.