# Cell Size in Honeycomb



## mmiller (Jun 17, 2010)

Interesting question.

The are "driven by the moment" in regards to their comb building. I have a lot of foundation-less comb. They are kind of like fingerprints in that no 2 seem to be alike. Some have a lot of brood cells and some are all honey and every variation in between. Not sure what exactly makes them decide what to build.

If I had to guess.....I would say they size the cells as they are building them. It would make sense since small cell and large cell bees differ in what they build. It wouldn't be very efficient to build it and tear it down. 

Mike


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## Matt NY (Jan 14, 2006)

As with any question asked to any beekeeper, the answer should always begin with: It depends.

There, of course, are generalities, but bees will be bees. That is what makes it interesting.

I have seen things that the books and gurus say, "can't and won't" about, and I have only been at it a few years and with a very few hives.

Good question. I'll be interested to see who responds how.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Yes, it's probably a doctoral thesis, probably several. The brood nest will be quite consistent, at least to start with. If you put a package on foundation or a swarm in a hive with foundation or with a few drawn combs and foundationless frames, they will pull nice, flat, even, solid brood combs in the center. Brood cells are very regular and even depth, makes it easy to see amid storage and drone comb.

If you have too much space between combs, though, very shortly they will start making storage cells at the top of the frames, and those will tend to get deeper and deeper as time goes by. If you don't leave them the drone comb they want out side the brood nest proper, they will tear out brood comb in patches and make drone cells. Foundationless frames inserted at the outside of the nest will get drawn as drone comb, then used for storage of pollen and honey when they aren't making drones.

A typical free-form comb is sort of tear-drop shaped, and the bees usually start multiple combs on a frame, so the final comb won't have straight lines of cells. Size will vary depending an what the bees need at the time.

Peter


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Being as queens will and can lay eggs in any cell in the comb, I see no distinction between brood comb and storage cells. It's a matter of what each cell is currently being used for at the time.

psfred, by size I mean bore, not depth. I may be wrong, but small cell does not refer to depth, does it?


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## MrHappy (Feb 10, 2012)

Just my thoughts. I think the bees measure the cells they are building by getting in them. Since the bees are all the same size from birth to death if they can fit in them then they are the perfect size for the brood that will be laid in them. It looks like they also make it interchangeable since it looks like honey cells are the same size. 

No idea on how they get the right size for the drones though or where they put them. It is interesting that it seem the center is all one thing on both sides and then the 2/3 frames from the side have one set of stuff one one side of the cells and another on the other. I noticed a bunch of eggs on the inside of the third frame, but only honey on the outside. The 4-5 frames all were exatly the same on both sides, having brood and honey in almost the same exact spots. 

This is just what I've seen in the hive in the first week and what I've read or heard about. I have also seen a bunch of people here use a few half foundation frames on the outsides so the bees can make the drone cells. It's interesting that drone cell is the only thing they ever put in that area though. I guess with the rest being all foundation they figure that it's the only place they can build it. But still interesting.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Mark, have you read this?

http://www.beesource.com/point-of-v...pon-the-size-and-variability-of-the-honeybee/


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

MrHappy,
I think what is happening w/ the drone comb building you refer to is that in an established colony of bees when a hole occurs for some reason or other, such as mouse damage, for some reason unknown to me bees will more often than not fill that space w/ drone comb.

Interestingly you will find that if you make a nuc w/ a queencell or set one up to raise its own queen, almost always any hole will be filled w/ worker cell sized comb. I have a friend who used to spend part of his winter going thru combs which he intended to use for spring nucs cutting out drone comb, sometimes just knocking out all the comb in a frame leaving the wires.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Barry said:


> Mark, have you read this?
> 
> http://www.beesource.com/point-of-v...pon-the-size-and-variability-of-the-honeybee/


No. And for some reason I can't access the Study when I click on it.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

All the links to the parts of the paper are on the left nav. Scroll down.


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## wadehump (Sep 30, 2007)

It must have to be a phd


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

sqkcrk said:


> ...when a hole occurs for some reason or other, such as mouse damage, for some reason unknown to me bees will more often than not fill that space w/ drone comb.


It because as a beekeeper using foundation, you've made the broodnest near 100% worker cell size. It is the same reason you probably get "bridge comb" between boxes full of drones. The bees want to raise drones, and since there is no other place to put the comb, they put it in the mouse damaged hole...or between boxes.



> ...if you make a nuc w/ a queencell or set one up to raise its own queen, almost always any hole will be filled w/ worker cell sized comb.


...because the nuc is intent on building a strong work force _before_ producing drones.

You should keep a TBH or foundationless Lang just for fun....you will see a lot that you don't get to see with foundation.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I'll try again.


Barry said:


> All the links to the parts of the paper are on the left nav. Scroll down.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

In my observation the size of the cell is driven by several factors. One is the spacing of the combs, and that seems to be driven by the intent for the comb being drawn. Another is the body size of the bees. Bees from large cell foundation are larger and want to draw larger cells. Back to the intent, if the use of the cell is intended to be honey storage it will be larger than worker cells in the brood nest. If the intent is to make drones, it will be much larger. If the intent is to use it to rear workers it will be smaller.

So the interrelated stimulus are things like the time of year, the number of drones in the hive, the amount of existing drone comb in the hive, the spacing of the combs, the size of the bees, the flow of the nectar etc.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Interesting. I was not aware of the variability of cell size w/in a beehive. Have beetrees been disected and cells measured throughout the different parts of the combs to verify these differences?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Huber has quite a bit to say on the subject, but here is the part on honey storage cells being different:

"There is another circumstance under which bees enlarge the dimensions of the cells; it is when a considerable crop of honey presents itself; not only do they give the cells a much larger diameter than common, but they prolong their tubes as far as space admits. In times of great harvest, we see irregular combs, the cells of which are an inch to an inch and a half in depth (2.5 to 4 cm)."--Francis Huber, New Observations Upon Bees Volume II Chapter V

Seeley said:

“The basic nest organization is honey storage above, brood nest below, and pollen storage in between. Associated with this arrangement are differences in comb structure. Com-pared to combs used for honey storage, combs of the brood nest are generally darker and more uniform in width and in cell form. Drone comb is located on the brood nest's periphery.” —The nest of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), T. D. Seeley and R. A. Morse


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Wouldn't what Huber states mean that some cells would be made larger at the expense of other cells?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Any larger diameter cell is at the expense of space somewhere to do the transition to larger but not afterwards. Any deeper cell is at the expense of space somewhere. Some other comb will have to be less deep. But I think Huber was looking at it from the point of view of a naturalist at the time, not a beekeeper with regular spaced combs. That point is that honey storage combs are thicker. They are also larger in diameter.


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## LampBurner (May 4, 2011)

I have a question to this discussion.
I have been using 4.9mm bees that I purchased that way all along sence I started. I was planning to regress a package of regualar 5.4 Russains to 4.9 by installing them on extracted honey comb I saved that my 4.9 bees built. That is, till I now have read that honey comb is larger than brood comb, that I didn't know. Will the bees still be regressed down to natural size if I proceed with my plan this Spring? I honestly haven't actually measured the differience between honey and brood comb as of yet.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Comb built from foundation tends to be the size of the foundation. Measure it and see what it is.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

I know it is customary to measure cells "center to center" but with brood comb it has thicker walls so the inscribed hexagon is smaller for brood comb when drawn on the same foundation. How much smaller will it get, if any, if it is used year after year?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I have never measured cell size, but I am under the impression that the common way of measuring is to measure the distance across a set of cells, say 10, outside to outside and divide by the number of cells measured.

If measuring bore, wouldn't one use a set of inside calipers?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

According to Grout there is a lower limit and they will chew them out and not let the size fall below that. My guess is that varies by bee size but then bee size would gradually shrink. Imagine how many more layers of cocoons it takes for 5.4mm cell to get to the lower limit...


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Aren't cocoons cleaned out of the cells?


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

sqkcrk said:


> I have never measured cell size, but I am under the impression that the common way of measuring is to measure the distance across a set of cells, say 10, outside to outside and divide by the number of cells measured.
> 
> If measuring bore, wouldn't one use a set of inside calipers?


Mark, to be 100% accurate it would be from the outside edge of the first cell to the inside edge of the last cell and then divide by the number of cells. To find the bore dia.~ measure the thickness of the wall using outside calipers and subtract.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Makes sense. I almost wrote it that way, but didn't.

I don't understand the bore measuring you describe. Why wouldn't you simply measure the inside dimension and not have to do any math to determine bore size?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Aren't cocoons cleaned out of the cells? 

At some lower threshold, yes.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Am not sure what that means.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

sqkcrk said:


> Makes sense. I almost wrote it that way, but didn't.
> 
> I don't understand the bore measuring you describe. Why wouldn't you simply measure the inside dimension and not have to do any math to determine bore size?


Well, why do you measure 10 cells across and then divide by 10 for a center to center dimension? To get an average. Otherwise you could be measuring a slightly smaller or larger cell than what is representative of the whole comb.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I guess if I were measuring the average bore size of worker cells, I would measure the inside dimension, the bore, of a number of cells, at least ten and then do the math to attain the average.

I'm confused. Does measuring 10 cells tell one whether the cells are small cell size or not? What's the small cell per inch or mm ratio?

Is bore an important measure or am I just muddying the waters in my mind?


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

sqkcrk said:


> I guess if I were measuring the average bore size of worker cells, I would measure the inside dimension, the bore, of a number of cells, at least ten and then do the math to attain the average.
> Is bore an important measure or am I just muddying the waters in my mind?


From what I see most people ignore it but it doesn't make sense to me.

Mark, have you actually tried to measure a wax cell with an inside caliper? In most cases it is easier to measure OD and far more accurate. A machinist would use pin gages. Find the one that fits the hole and then measure the pin to make sure it is marked correctly. The eye can see better measuring outside and you can feel the caliper better with outside measurements.

Yeah, you are probably muddying the waters in your mind. You got water on the brain?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Prolly. 

No, I have not measured cells at all. Maybe I shouldn't be asking about it.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Am not sure what that means. 

It means the bees have some threshold they won't go below. When the cocoons have built up to the point that the size is below that threshold they will chew out the cocoons. But not before that. So with larger cells that is a lot more cocoons.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I see. Thanks.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Michael Bush said:


> >Am not sure what that means.
> 
> It means the bees have some threshold they won't go below. When the cocoons have built up to the point that the size is below that threshold they will chew out the cocoons. But not before that. So with larger cells that is a lot more cocoons.


So if a hive is left on their own as in feral the bees are continually shrinking until they get to that threshold.


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