Hi Dan

If eggs are laid in cells the size of which is considerably reduced, very small bees will emerge from these cells. An example would be if a comb got scrunched somehow. 

Also, laying workers lay drone eggs in worker cells, resulting in mini-drones. These are viable drones, but its doubtful whether they can fly fast enough to score. 

When this fact was noticed, it was speculated that large bees could be raised using large comb. They can but the difference isn't enough to make a difference (you probably couldn't tell by looking). 

The whole small cell doctrine supposes that honey bees were artificially enlarged at some point by the use of comb foundation, and from that flowed all the problems of the world. 

A species as old as Apis is pretty tightly regulated in regard to size. They instinctively build a certain range of cell sizes and the bees correspond to that range. Mostly, the difference is imperceptible, except when you have two distinct phenotypes (African vs European) or different species like A. florea vs cerana, dorsata, etc. 

PLB

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