# study: Life span of worker honeybees reared in colonies kept on small-cell combs



## Clayton Huestis (Jan 6, 2013)

Passing this along: http://resistantbees.com/blog/?page_id=2271


Clay


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Clay, thanks. That is interesting reading.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

I wonder would this page ever put anything negative to small cell as a link on show...


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

Not very likely, Juhani...

And a few more newbees head for the small cells...


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## kingd (Oct 31, 2013)

You almost make it sound like small cell is a bad thing.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

There are some topics on Beesource that always elicit strong feelings. Sometimes, the arguments that transpire bring out facts and experiences that are interesting. Small cell is one of them.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

In figure 1 it is shown that when they compared small cells bees with normal cell bees(5,56mm , is that normal ?! in Finland normal is 5,3mm)
they found out that 2011 bees from normal cells lived longer.

What happens then? My guess. Because they got the wrong results they are the next year 2012 comparing untreated small cell bees and TREATED normal cell bees. WOW, this is science! 

Finally 2013 they got the right result- bees from small cells are living longer. Hallelujah. ( and even here when comparing the longest living bees, in the situation when only 25% of the population is left, there is no significant difference between groups)

http://medycynawet.edu.pl/images/stories/pdf/pdf2014/122014/201412777780.pdf


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I found it rather confusing. Measuring the length of time they took to starve to death is not (in my mind) a predictor of length of normal productive lifespan if uncaged! A couple of like this, and the 5.56mm cell size being considered representative, etc., calls question to the whole survey. I think it is going to take better controlled research than this to settle the questioned benefit of generally smaller cell size.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

A comment on today's Bee-L digest is relevant to this thread --
=======
Randy,
I have been weighing bees all year from the samples being sent for virus
screening. I have been taking six grams of bees and counting the number of
bees needed to make up the six grams. While there are differences between
wet and dry bees most of the samples are fairly consistent in texture. The
variety of bee does affect the weight, but with repeat samples I have found
consistency in weight. The bee weight does appear to change with the
seasons and it changes with stress as measured in the viral loads and the
nosema spore counts. You can track bee weight if you want to. By the way
the typical bees were around .110 grams each more weight is better and less
is not well. Bees came in from all over the country.
Dave Wick
========

To me this implies that "small bees" are simply colonies with chronic and debilitating endemic viral loads. This is not surprising since "small cell (ie. small bees)" is roughly identical to TF management.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

crofter said:


> I found it rather confusing.


As did I, not only was it written in a confusing way but the part that got me was trying to compare like with like, which they didn't quite do plus the problem where one year gave the opposite result, so they go with 2 out of 3? the results seemed kind of random and it felt like if they'd run it another year they would have had results like year 2 so it would have been 2 years one way 2 years another way.

Juhani dug in & kind of made sense of it but the experiment needs to be done better. There are ways lifespan could be calculated using actual hives, and that would be the best, real world result and one I would have more faith in.


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