first thing, queens aren't raised in small cells like worker bee's, they are raised in queen cells witch might start in a small cell but not finished in one, now you can have a small queen but most good queens are large because they were well feed, usually smaller queens weren't feed well thats why they end up smaller, I dont have small cell hives so I really cant give you a answer to suit everyone but just what I know, maybe small cell beeks like MB, Barry, or others can answer this better...
All my bees are SC, a standard queen excluder seems to work fine. I have heard that sometimes a queen (either SC or LC) can still squeeze through, but I have not had that happen to me (yet).
Russian and Carnie queens tend to be long and skinny compared to the big fat Italian queens. I have had a few but not many of the black queens slip through before. But it isn't often.
But these guys are correct, the same cell cups are used for either sc or lc queen rearing. And no good reason that a sc queen should be any smaller because of cell size. And even drawn from a frame there shouldn't be any difference in the size of the cell produced. If that were to be true, then you could also expect drones to be smaller. I find it improbable that the bees are thinking that way.
In my experience, small cell queens DO tend to be a bit smaller.
Many might say that they do not appear smaller, BUT, I suspect
that IF they would have a larger queen to compare, they will
see that they are in fact smaller. There is a ‘memory’ in cell
sizes that bees build. And this also applies to queen cell
building with small cell bees building queen cells just a bit
smaller.
To answer your question.
The restrictive point on a queen that keeps her from
passing through, is the ‘thorax‘. In small cell queens,
the change in size occurs overall, BUT mainly in the
abdomen. The thorax width changes very little, and
not enough to cause any major problems with queens
passing through.
So can a full size queen lay eggs in a small cell hive?
Yes I'm a total Newb but I am looking into everything. And the esophageal mites sound like an issue I would like to prevent. If it in fact helps prevent them.
When did tracheal mites become an issue again? More importantly, why won't some things ever die? Struttinbuck, allowing the bees to build as much foundationless comb as possible is the best choice for getting natural sized cells. But in the end, it really does not make much of a difference IMO. More to the point, learn to keep bees before going to the other side.
Frank, completely missed it the first read. Yikes! I assume you have a similar problem with drones and the bantam hens?
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