Hi all on Bee-l Robert Brenchley wrote: Have you measured them for comparison? Ruttner, Milner & Dews reported in'The Dark European Honey Bee' that the size of the forewing in A.m.m. found in archaeological digs dating from about 800 and 1000 years ago were similar to those of modern bees, presumably raised on large foundation. Does the wing size change as the bees are downsized. Reply: Well, it certainly changed as they were upsized on artificial foundation Robert. Please see page 76, May 1928 "Bee World" Archiv fur Bienenkunde, which says: "From larger cells, the bees have larger fore-wings and wider terga' but the number of the hamuli in not affected." Also roy Grout did a thesis on "The Influence of Size of Brood Cell Upon the Size of the Worker Bee" that was published in Research Bulletin 218, June 1937 as " The INfluence of Size of Brood Cell Upon the Size and variability fo the Honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) in Ames Iowa, in which he stated that "our data substantiate those of Michailov which show that an increase in teh size of brood cells is accompanied by a corresponding increase in the weight, length of right forewing, width of right forewing, sum of widths of third and fourth tergits and length of proboscis. A Shorter version of this publication was also published in ABJ pages 178-180 April 1936 and Table 1 there and accompanying grafts give percentages for increase over three cell sizes of increasing size he used in his experiments on this subject matter. So you can see how much the length and width do change with cell size. To not see the changes I would tend to think that Ruttner maybe was using feral colonies not on enlarged combs maybe. What do you feel? Regards, Dee A. Lusby __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - sign up for Fantasy Baseball http://sports.yahoo.com