Natural Cell Queens

[AramF]

I have a two part question.

There has been a lot of talk of positive nature of small cells. So the question that I have, can the cell be too small for the queen to lay eggs. I mean, if a queen was raised from a hive where workers hatched from 5.4 mm cell, can she then be introduced into a hive where workers only work on 4.9 cells. I am curious if her abdomen is potentially too large to fit into smaller cell to lay eggs.

The second question, are there reputable breeders on this board who cell degressed bees with natural "immunity" to varroa mite? If so, can you provide their contact information. Looks like M Bush is out for next season as far as selling bees, according to his website, so looking for somone with similar stock that has gone through regression and is showing positive ability to overwinter.

[DigitalBishop]

I've seen this question asked before. A queen that is raised from 5.4 cell stock should have little trouble laying in 4.9 cells. She'll just corkscrew her abdomen in to the cell. The better thing to do than requeening with a commercially bred queen is to make sure the bees have eggs, pinch the queen and let them raise their own in the Spring.

I'd go to the Organic Beekeepers list and search for a list of beeks that sell regressed bee nucs or packages.

Bishop

[Michael Bush]

>can the cell be too small for the queen to lay eggs.

I have seen one very fat queen once that had problems with small cell and the bees superseded her. Otherwise out of hundreds of regressions I have not seen that.

>The second question, are there reputable breeders on this board who cell degressed bees with natural "immunity" to varroa mite?

You can probably find quite a few. Usually I have some, but won't this coming year. Fatbeeman (on here) usually has some and seems to be one of the larger suppliers but there are many smaller ones if you check around.