In article <004a01c26894$ee0be280$70ae73d1@allen>, Allen Dick
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>No matter.  In the process of examining these contentions, we will learn
>more about what we are doing and how the decisions made a century ago
>affect our own day-to-day beekeeping.  Lets look at all these ideas and see
>what we learn.  Michael's discovery may or may not prove to be significant
>when examined by beekeepers throughout the worldwide scope of this list,
>but IMO, it is something to respect and ponder.

Quite fortuitously the day before this appeared I had retrieved a feral
from a juniper bush near one of my locations and still had the combs
attached to the branch. (I have been routinely examining these kind of
things ever since Allen started his cell size survey a good while back
now.)

Sorry, but it does not fit this model at all.

In one comb the upper leg of the Y lies at about 320 deg, the right hand
leg at about 80 deg, the lower one at about 200 deg. All measured
(roughly) from ) deg at the vertical upwards position. I see no peculiar
middle comb. On this comb the cell line declines at about 10 deg from
the horizontal from left to right across the comb. All this is mirror
imaged on the other face.

Another has two different orientations on the one comb, joining near the
middle of the comb, with part of the comb having horizontal faces of the
cells upwards and vertices pointing E and W. Only one piece of comb, an
outer one and very small, had cells appearing to lie in perfectly
horizontal lines with the Y pattern as stated. There was no drone in the
combs whatsoever, but this does not surprise me as we cannot get drone
drawn at all late in the season once the need for drones is past. Comb
drawn here in September is invariably perfect worker without a drone
cell. I have watched the drone distribution in ferals over the years and
it is the basis for a variation (originally French I think) of the drone
trapping method of varroa control used in some European countries, where
you use combs 3 or 4 and then 7 or 8 to attract the drone brood by
placing a shallow instead of a deep and allowing the bees to hang wild
comb (almost invariably drone) in the gap created. I normally find 3 or
4 completely worker combs in the centre, with a largely drone one
outside that on either side, then a mix after that. Cell orientation is
largely random and apparently dictated by the first attachment to the
anchor point.

There are problems being attributed to cell orientation which we simply
do not have. We have no problems with excessive requeening, indeed some
go on for up to four years, and do NOT get all the queen cells on one
face of a comb. None of the symptoms Dee mentions are things I have seen
as any kind of problem in our unit.

FWIW, the point of all this examination of feral comb is to see if I am
mistaken in my thinking on cell size theory and always looking for
evidence which may challenge my thoughts on the issue.

In the past week I had taken pieces of feral comb from a colony which
was a swarm emerged from one of my Pierco colonies (thus on 5.2
foundation) plus a feral known to have come from a feral of long
standing in the roof of a stately home ( estimated by owner to be at
least 100 years old, but they all say that!)

Ave from the Pierco originating swarm 5.25
Ave from feral originating colony 5.25

Apart from a very sickly colony with acarine mites this is the smallest
wild comb I have seen in this area, and if bees on 5.2 are not going
down in size I then wonder if we are around the correct size for this
area. ( If there is indeed such a thing other than within fairly wide
natural parameters)
--
Murray McGregor