Small Cell Queens and Excluders

[Sundance]

This is an interesting question that came
up in another thread.....

Are small cell queens smaller? On first
guess I would say no because they are
raised in a queen cell regardless of the
cell size of the brood comb.

And if they are smaller...... Why?? And
then do queen excluder's become useless??

[Dave W]

Sundance . . .

Please allow me to add a question:

Do small cell workers produce "small size queen cells", thus producing SC queens? smile.gif

[notaclue]

When I've seen queen cells this past year, not mine, I've seen them in various sizes. Some that were just barely able to recognize as a queen cells and not drone. Others that were no doubt about it, they were queen cells. I don't know which lived.

David

[drobbins]

BWrangler has done an awful lot of measuring bees and he doesn't seem to think small cell bees are smaller than regular bees. He seems to think bee size is more of a seasonal thing

http://bwrangler.madpage.com/bee/ssiz.htm

Dave

[ December 04, 2006, 04:10 PM: Message edited by: drobbins ]

[wade]

Thanks for that link Dave.

[Michael Bush]

>Are small cell queens smaller?

Maybe. Maybe not. I don't try to breed for size, so some seem smaller, some are not. All in all, I don't think they are any different. A worker cells is smaller for small cell bees, but a queen cell is generously bigger than a queen. She is not limited by the cell size.

> On first guess I would say no because they are
raised in a queen cell regardless of the
cell size of the brood comb.

Exactly.

>And if they are smaller...... Why??

If at all, maybe because we aren't breeding them to be larger.

> And then do queen excluder's become useless??

Queen excluders are already useless. Oh, you mean at keeping the queen below them. ;) In my experience, if you smoke any queen enough she will go through any excluder. smile.gif

[drobbins]

wade,

read all of bwranglers site, there's a lot of great stuff there

Dave