From: Erik Osterlund <honeybee@elgon.se>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 16:02:53 +0100
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Brood diseases

At 19.39 +1000 02-01-03, T & M Weatherhead wrote:
>Clay wrote
.... But by placing bees back on a more natural
>> sizing would change the composition of the food in the cell the larvae feed
>> upon making for a healthier bee. Which in turn would be able to defend
>> better against sickness and disease.
>
>This is a new angle. How does cell size suddenly change the composition of
>the food. ...
>How does cell size suddenly affect the nutrition of the honey collected or
>the composition of the pollen i.e. amino acids etc.

Trevor

It is said, I don't know who, maybe Dee knows, that bees feed jelly up t a
certain level in the cell. Thus making it more food per workerbee i bigger
cells than in smaller. Anyhow,I kow and others with me, that when bees in
for example nucs can't feed enough new brood, the bees hatching out are
smaller. whether those bees are healthier or not due to that I've no idea.
But we do know that in worker cells there's no food left ast the bottom as
it may well be whena qieen has hatched out. That means all worker larvae
eats everything. Overfeading is a speculation to be the cause of too fat
larvae with effects whatever that can give. Another effect seen, expressed
again by David deJong at Apimondia in South Africa is that worker brood in
bigger cells attracts varroa more than worker brood in smaller cells
resulting in that you find a lot more varroa in bigger worker cells than in
small cells when both are available in a colony, from teste they've made. I
think it was made in 1995 already, think it is to be read on beesource.com
somewhere. So the bigger amount of food can be the cause of this as we know
some hormone in the jelly attracts varroa. So bigger cells effects larvae
food. To what effects we know some, but too little and can speculate the
moore. there's a lot to do for scientists, even if they maybe will have
less to do with diseases when small cell size has won the world.....

Erik