Martin predicted that raising bees in small comb would create smaller bees, so that the effect of crowding the mites would be lost. I discussed this at length here when Martin's report first came out. 	("New study on cell size" Mon, 11 Mar 2002). This prediction was confirmed by the Berry study. 

Interest in small-cell foundation has been
fueled in part by observations of Martin and
Kryger (2002) that conditions which constrict
the space between the host pupa and male
protonymph mite promote male mite mortality.

However, as these authors point out, “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”. The present study supports this
deduction directly, and its premise indirectly:
average bee live weight in October was numerically
smaller in small-cell colonies than conventional.

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