[simplynatural]

I lost my hives last year to a fluke accident with cows in November. Anyway, they were small cell bees that started on foundationless and did an excellent job of it til their hives were destroyed by cows.

So I had no ability or access to small cell bees and have 3 packages Italian and 2 carniolan/Italian coming that are on regular cell. I also have 8 supers full of good comb and honey still (I did not extract it and kept it for this year's bees), and 4 more supers of good comb, but all natural cell foundationless. My question is, I had hoped to be able to givce this year's bees a good start with the stored honey, pollen and supers full of good comb, but I do not think I can do so without a generation of regression - bees won't fit into the small cell. What can I do to use what I have?
THank you

 

[cg3]

Have you actually measured? And is it all the same size?

 

[Duncan151]

The bees that you are going to get are already hatched out. As long as the queen can fit into the small cell to lay an egg, then you should be all set. The only other issue would be if the package nurse bees cannot for some reason fit their front half into the cell to clean, feed larvae etc.. In my limited experience, I would give it a shot, or give them a foundation less frame, to work with if they cannot use your old ones.

 

[Michael Bush]

>I can do so without a generation of regression - bees won't fit into the small cell.

Large cell bees can and will fit into small cells. They just hesitate to build them as they are building from a blueprint of their own body size. If you have small cell comb and you put large cell bees on it, in a generation of brood you'll have small cell bees.