Hi all

Peter Dillon gives us some figures for cell wall thickness.

The situation is a little more complex than numbers can describe.

Humans are large relative to bees and the small variations in comb give it a
"regular" appearance, but if we take a mean value and then plot values as
deviations from the mean we will arrive at a distribution.

How far should we take this process? should we measure a whole comb? a patch
of it or a horizontal strip of it?

If we adopt any of these strategies we get a different final result... Which
is the "correct" one?

The same situation applies to wall thickness... Different strains of bee
will produce a range of initial thicknesses of rib and wall thickness,
different strains will have a variable tolerance to the number of cocoons
that are allowed to build up before the cell is torn down and rebuilt
affresh.

I personally take a compromise and whenever I make calculations involving
wall thickness I use 0.1 mm (0.004") which is a generallised average. This
is just my own standardisation, in the same way as I always use 13 as a
number when calculations include the number of drones mated to a queen.

The numbers may not be "right", but they are consistant across a range of
calculations,  removing some of the obstacles, allowing comparisons.

Regards From:- Dave Cushman, G8MZY
Beekeeping and Bee Breeding, http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman
IBList Archives, http://website.lineone.net/~d.cushman