my problem with the small cell advocates is that it's almost like a religion (like most 'natural' things become) and for inexperienced people trying to do the right thing, it may be a real risk to their hives. they won't have the experience to know when they are in trouble.
Seems to me the "treatment" people are the religious folks. Let us look at the "inexperienced" folks. Those that won't know when they are in trouble. If they know so little then how will they know what treatment to use, when to use it, and for how long. How will they know to do it with or with out brood or honey supers on? You can still wipe out your bees. Only thing is you spent more funds on the method you used to kill them.
I really don't understand what is so hard to figure out about the natural bee thing. If you let the bees do it......LONG ENOUGH..... they will build small cells. I have some as small as 4.7 that I have cut out of walls.
IF people are putting bees on cells that are an unnatural size, causing an unnaturally longer period to get capped and uncapped, causing bees to be unnaturally large, how can anyone not see that this could cause problems? Sure the unnatural size has been around awhile and for awhile everything was fine.
Like dumping toxic waste into a pond. Every thing will seem fine for awhile but then two headed frogs start showing up. Can't be the toxic waste doing that, it's been there all these years with no problem. SO pour in something else to stop two headed frog births and later down the line we get centipede trout. Can't be nothing we done before because it was done years ago and this just showed up.
It is said that the varroa mite jumped species just recently. Could it have done that because of the manipulation of bees. Something caused the bees to become attractive to the mites. Could it bee that what man has done to the bees has led up to CCD. And now they will find what ever that is and they will come up with some sort of treatment for it, and then something else will come along.....
Some one post an article that mentions that natural/organic beeks are not having trouble with CCD. And before anyone says it, Some of these folks are commercial beekeepers.