Does Small Cell = Natural Cell?

Natural Cell Size And it's implications to beekeeping and Varroa mites

Trial of HoneySuperCell® Small Cell Combs

As a follow up to my HoneySuperCell trial, I restocked the hives, and have run them mixed arbitrarily in my operation of 500 colonies.  In general, but not absolutely, we have avoided giving the HSC colonies mite treatments, just to see what they’d do.  Danged if they don’t just keep plugging along–often outperforming the “normal” colonies alongside

After the conference was over, a few of us were lucky enough to get a personal tour of some of Dee’s bee yards

Dee Lusby Organic Beekeeper

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the Organic Beekeeping Conference in Oracle, Arizona. This event is put together every year by Dee Lusby, the queen of Organic and Treatment Free Beekeeping.  Dee Lusby is a commercial beekeeper with over 700 hives in southern Arizona, the founder of the Organic Beekeepers Yahoo Group and the pioneer of small cell beekeeping. Dee believes modern beekeeping has lost its way and encourages beekeepers to find their way back to biological beekeeping.

Analysis of small cell test designs

ERIK ÖSTERLUND

Smaller cells in the broodnest than what is most common today, does it have any advantages? Particularly – does it have any advantages concerning Varroa resistance for the bee colony? Bees naturally
build different sizes of cells depending on where they are built in the nest, smallest downward nearest the entrance where the brood is and biggest upwards and away from the entrance where honey is stored.

Small Cell Size Foundation for Mite Control

Dee A. Lusby

I find myself in a position of having to write a field review showing the economic importance of a research article “Natural Suppression of Honey Bee Tracheal Mites in North Dakota: A Five Year Study” which was recently published in the May 1996, American Bee Journal, written by Erickson, et al., 1996.