From: Erik Osterlund <honeybee@elgon.se>
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 8:39 am
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@egroups.com
Subject: Re: Regression: bee length as an indication of "true" sizing down?

Hi Clay

At 10.17 -0800 04-01-05, huestis wrote:
...I wonder if Erik O. could mention again about his trials in weighing
regressed bees to see if they compared with Wedmores info?

Sorry, no more figures from Sweden. This summer I was occupied with too much as usual, and the guy who as the weighing equipement had his back operated on.

Size of the bee though is formed in first place from genetics, but also from environment. As always a combinations between those two. Environment is in this case among other things cell size and amount of food (and correct food). Besides outer size of the bees there are inner 'sizes' (traits) of the bee, I guess not as easily recognized as the outer size.

Traits are formed very much in bees from the amount of food, look at how great diferences there are between queen and workerbee just due to differences in food. So outer size doesn't say the whole truth about the qualities of the bee or the bee colony. But measureing the sizes of bees during the season of course is interesting and we have to be grateful to Dennis making all these observations. To get a still better comparison would be to have colonies with the same kind of genetic setup, on big cells and on small cells. And to compare such groups which are of different genetic setups. But this I understand would lead us common people with very restricted possibilities to far what we can accomplish.

Again, thanks to Dennis for his woork and observations.

Erik