This afternoon I shivered in a cold polytunnel while it was trying to snow outside and measured the cell sizes of the 13 frames of a 14 x 12 hive. I did top right, centre and bottom left on both sides of each comb working from front to back (warm way) so effectively the reverse sides were top left, middle and bottom right.

 

The average figures work out thus: Top right 5.31mm; middle 5.18mm; bottom left 5.36mm.  The average for each comb face was: 5.27, 5.4, 5.43, 5.47, 5.2, 5.43, 5.2, 5.37, 5.17, 5.13, 5.13, 5.15, 5.17, 5.1, 5.4, 5.27, 5.33, 5.27, 5.37, 5.37, 5.23, 5.35, 5.35, 5.37, 5.23, 5.05.

 

Smoothing the zig zags, the pattern fore to aft shows the smallest cell size in the middle and greater at front and rear, each comb on average having smaller cells in the middle than on the periphery. The largest cells (excluding drone) were 5.8 and the smallest 4.9mm.

 

Chris