In a message dated 8/9/02 3:52:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: > I'm not intending to poor cold water on the small cell issue, but I do > want > to be open about what is happening with those going through this process, as > it is not just a simple matter of putting bees on small cell foundation and > all problems are over. > Hello > > When I first started to downsize a few years ago, I happened to read a > medical paper about a lady who received a hart and lung transplant. When > she first awakened from surgery, she said she would die for a beer. This > lady never before had a drink of beer. She also had a craving for chicken > nuggets. > Through her research (newspapers) she found her donor to be a young man > killed in a motorcycle accident. She received permission to talk to his > parents. He lived on beer and chicken nuggets. I discussed this with > doctors and they say it is common. They call this Body Cell Memory. > This made me think of the mechanisms in play when one down sizes bees. > Are they making the cell size smaller from memory or is it body cell > memory? I placed two boxes with 4.9 foundation next to each other and shook > a hive into each one. They both did a very bad job of drawing out the > foundation. I waited until the first brood was ready to emerge. I then > shook one of the hives onto another box of 4.9 foundation. No new bees. > Again, they drew out the foundation very poorly. It looked like the first > foundation they drew out. > I shook the other hive onto 4.9 foundation after it was more established > and the new brood had emerged. They did a much better job of drawing the > foundation. It was a little mixed but there were more cells 4.9 or close to > 4.9. This may not have been very scientific, but I did learn that it may be > the bees with 4.9 body cell memory that are doing a better job at drawing > out the foundation. > The year before all this, I shook two hives down onto the Dadant 4.9 > foundation, which turned out to be 5.0 or the 900 series. I went back to > those records and photos. The bees drew out the 900 foundation nicely. A > large percentage of the cells were 5.0 or just slightly bigger. The next > shakedown onto 4.9 foundation was also very good. What did this tell me? > The first down size onto 5.0 foundation gave me a larger amount of new bees > emerging with a smaller body cell size memory. There were more bees better > at drawing out true 4.9 foundation. If I shake a large cell hive directly > onto 4.9 foundation, I get very few bees with a body cell memory of small > cells. There is such a gamete of cell sizes and it took two more shake > downs to get to good 4.9 cells. > For someone thinking of down sizing, it is not easy. Most of the work can > only be done in the spring. You have to feed at all times. It will be > cheaper to down size into three or four frame nukes. You will not waste ten > sheets of foundation. Your last shake down can then be into a box with ten > frames of foundation. If body cell memory is in play, one can fine tune an > established 4.9 hive by culling out not quite perfect frames. > My off the wall reasoning. forrest > > >