how big can you make a bee

[slacker361]

I understand that if you go to natural foundation the bees are smaller, but how large can you make a bee, if you made the cells larger how big can you make a bee?

[montauk170]

Sorta on the same subject, are the larger size bees more efficient and live longer, or the smaller ones are?
My guess would be the smaller ones, also they can work more flowers, maybe.

[Finski]

but how large can you make a bee, if you made the cells larger how big can you make a bee?

You cannot do that

If you sleep in long bed, you will grow no longer

[Finski]

My guess would be the smaller ones, also they can work more flowers, maybe.

What about bumbble bees. They are big and very fast.

Quick in the the flower means that it has no nectar.
When raspberry flower is full of nectar it takes 20 second to suck it.'

Big bee - big tubes!

[slacker361]

but if i sleep in a short bed i will not get shorter, but a bee in a smaller cell will. so a bee in a slightly bigger cell that a natural foundation will become a a larger bee, so following that logic you should be able to get a pretty big bee

[fermentedhiker]

I'm no expert but I'd would assume there is an upper limit to the growth/per day and the number of days to complete development of a worker larvae.  If this is the case even with perfect nutrition there would be a point where a larger cell wouldn't make a larger bee and in fact might prove detrimental to it's development.  What that upper limit it I cannot say, although I suspect we are near it.  I had read somewhere that part of the push to enlarge bees was to get them big enough to have a long enough tongue to work mammoth clover.  I don't know if that is true but since bees don't work it still(at least I've never seen them work it) it seems they're as big as they are going to get already.

just my thoughts.

[HomeBru]

but how large can you make a bee, if you made the cells larger how big can you make a bee?

You cannot do that

If you sleep in long bed, you will grow no longer

Commercial strains of honey bees are the result of this type of "experimentation". Feral bees (wild) tend to be smaller, but somebody thought it would be interesting to see if bigger bees were better so they gave the bees foundation embossed with larger cell sizes.

From Michael Bush's site:

Next we beekeepers need to control the pests in a natural way. We will elaborate more on this as we go, but Dee and Ed Lusby arrived at the conclusion that the solution to this was to get back to natural cell size. Foundation (the source of contamination in the hive from pesticide buildup in the world beeswax supply) is designed to guide the bees to build the size cells we want. Since workers are from one size and drones from another and since beekeepers for more than a century have viewed drones as the enemy of production, beekeepers use foundation to control the size cells the bees make. At first this was based on natural sizes of cells. Early foundation ran from about 4.4mm to 5.05mm. But then someone (Francis Huber was the first) observed that bees build a variety of cell sizes and that large bees emerged from large cells and small bees emerged from small cells. So Baudoux decided that if you enlarged the cells more you could get larger bees. The assumption was that larger bees could haul more nectar and therefore would be more productive. So now, today, we have a standard cell size of foundation that is 5.4mm. When you consider that at 4.9mm the comb is about 20mm thick and at 5.4mm the comb is 23mm thick this makes a difference in the volume. According to Baudoux the volume of a 5.555mm cell is 301cubic mm. The volume of a 4.7mm cell is 192mm. Natural cell size runs from about 4.4mm to 5.1mm with 4.9mm or smaller being the common size in the core of the brood nest.

j-

[AllenF]

If you spend the next 10 years breeding large queens to large drones, and keeping the offspring that throw large workers, eventually you should make a larger be.   Same with cows or horses or dogs.

[slacker361]

wow a bee the size of a cow, I would have to give her my house as a hive, imagine using a smoker on that one, she would slap you and take the smoker, and start smoking you LOL

[AllenF]

Can you imagine getting impelled by that stinger?

[Finski]

so following that logic you should be able to get a pretty big bee

There are weight results on bees and they have limited size, minimum and maximum  80-120 mg. Loaded with honey the weigjht is about 170 mg.  
Size of the bee is in genes, not in cells.

[slacker361]

if the size is in the genes , why when going back to natural cell size do bees get smaller?

[deknow]

size is affected by genes, but it is also affected by cell size...this has been well documented for a long time.  anyone denying that cell size affects the size of the bee hasn't looked into it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=i0PoSYNEsh0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=abc+and+xyz+of+bee+culture&hl=en&ei=S7daTNuQPM_6ngfnm5CaBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-preview-link&resnum=1&ved=0CDYQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q=enlarged%20cell&f=false

..the above talks about the work of Baudoux going back to the 30's and before.

deknow

[Scadsobees]

I recently found workers growing in drone comb...I'd already froze that frame  :roll:.  They didn't look abnormally large.  In fact they had a lot of room in those cells.

[Finski]

size is affected by genes, but it is also affected by cell size...

deknow

It is easy to notice. When the hive has old combs, they have brood silk inside many layers, and the bees will be smaller.

In some point bees chew the combs and renew them totally.

BUT! it is another thing, how big they CAN are. Not so big and not so small either. Often when you give regular foundations to normal size bees, the bees brake the foundation and make their own size cells.

[fermentedhiker]

If you spend the next 10 years breeding large queens to large drones, and keeping the offspring that throw large workers, eventually you should make a larger be.   Same with cows or horses or dogs.

That's not really true.  Bees are not truly domesticated animals.  For all the messing about with them man has done they are still really just a managed "wild" animals, often thriving in spite of rather than because of us.  For example neither a pomeranian or a great dane would survive very long in the wild on there own competing against real wildlife.  At some point in genetically manipulating the size of a bee you would end up something that couldn't take care of itself.  I'm not saying someone shouldn't try if they feel so inclined though.

[Michael Bush]

http://books.google.com/books?id=i0PoSYNEsh0C&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=baudoux+cell+size+tongue&source=bl&ots=hrfXWnLiab&sig=nhNQlukFBwA8gwQp50FylGQHvug&hl=en&ei=1TFZTIyAOoXgnAeRyfmuCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=baudoux%20cell%20size%20tongue&f=false

http://www.beesource.com/files/lusby-influence-cell-size-3.jpg

The research was done a hundred years ago bu Baudoux and repeated by Pinchot, Gontarski and others.  The measurments are in the chart.  That's how much bigger you can get.  Basically half again as large as a natural sized bee.

[slacker361]

while that is not cow size that still is impressive

[Finski]

while that is not cow size that still is impressive

Or cow bee size like in lilliputti land.

smallest cow race is in India and is about 100 kg.

Biggest are over 1000 kg.

[AllenF]

Look how big they grow bees in England.  Here is a pic of one on flowers in front of a greenhouse.