“Meanwhile, it’s 5.1 mm foundation, followed by 4.9 mm, for me.”
Wouldn’t using the old comb eventually have the same effect? I understand they do not clean out the cocoons when the brood hatches out.
Yes, there is a build up of material in brood comb cells. They do get smaller. Which may be one reason wax foundation makers went from original sizing (in the late 1800's) of 4.85 mm, or thereabouts, to approx. 5.35mm, in one particular large-scale commercial bee supplier's standard brood cell size? That, and they thinking went, "bigger bee, more nectar=more honey", etc...
I just measured some brood comb from a feral hive (which absconded, leaving comb behind) and found 5.2mm cell size in the brood comb. This leaves me to consider that these bees were from a swarm thrown from somebody's standard (foundation size) equipment, since they were not regressed in size from the widely used 5.2-5.4 mm range of size.
Periodic renewal of brood comb, though going against commercial orthodoxy, to an extent, might be a help, just from a hygenic point of view.
What I do wonder much about, among so many other considerations, is the re-use of wax. If one is thinking about reducing exposure to viruses, then just how much virus might be found in the wax? We know trace amounts of chemicals bees have been exposed to (or treated with!) can be in wax, so if one is using this wax again making their own foundation...
Oh, well, nevermind about that, since unless one could actually BEGIN with completely virus-free bees, then some virus present in the wax won't matter too much, will it, if the virus is present on the bees bodies anyway?
I'm certainly not covering any new ground here...beekeepers have been mulling things like this over, and experimenting (and getting mixed results, quite often) for some time now. It's not like things once were. All these new challenges, on top of some of the same OLD challenges...times have changed.
I do wish some folks could come along, and sort out the root causes of these latest bee disappearances. And I wish those capable, could be funded to investigate viruses, and fungus, and how those may effect honeybees, along with further work towards reducing varroa, like --- making (relatively cheap, and very effective) oxalic acid treatements legal in the U.S., like they are in Europe!
You say you experienced losses due to mites? The tracheal, or the varroa, or both? Do you still have bees? Did you ever try feeding "grease patties" for reduction of tracheal mites, or use Api strips for the varroa? Ever try other varroa treatments? Powedered sugar, (as long as it doesn't contain corn starch, very important!) works if one can thoroughly dust the bees. The sugar seems to kill the varroa mites on contact. The trouble with that method, is that it is thoroughly disruptive and invasive, and the bees don't appreciate it much, at the time, hehehe... i can't imagine doing that to hundreds of hives, like 12 hundred, or 17 hundred, like the big commercial operators have.
It appears to me, that there are better strategies for varroa treatment, than Apistan, and other similar stuff. But I won't go into all of it in detail here...since it's much better to get that sort of info from those with more authority than myself.
got any used bee equipment you want hauled away? heheheh...