From: "usbwrangler" <usbwrangler@juno.com>
Date: Fri Jan 9, 2004 8:11 pm
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@egroups.com>
Subject: Re: Small Bees from a Large Cell Hive


Hi Guys,

It got up to 50 degrees today and the bees were flying. So I shot
January's bees and did some measuring.

The bees were able to fly a little bit so I captured another round of
photos and have measured them for December.

Averages
Large
Sept Oct..Nov..Dec..Jan
1.37 1.31 1.29 1.33 1.36 length
0.96 0.94 0.93 0.96 1.00 wing
0.45 0.38 0.37 0.35 0.36 thorax
0.46 0.46 0.47 0.45 0.44 abdomen

Averages
Small Cell Hives
Sept Oct.. Nov..Dec..Jan
1.32 1.29 1.31 1.32 1.34 length
0.92 0.91 0.93 0.92 0.98 wing
0.45 0.35 0.37 0.34 0.37 thorax
0.45 0.45 0.47 0.43 0.48 abdomen

The sample was alot better this time than in December. The
measurements for individual hives were very consistent. The bees were
almost uniform size in my Russian hive.

The increased abdomen width in the small cell bees was very apparent
on the photographs, even before measuring.

There's still not much difference betweeen large and small cell bees
overall.

But discounting Decembers measurements, which were probably not very
representative, both kinds of bees are getting larger through the
winter.

Regards