A study was conducted at Wombera and Pawe districts of Benishangul-gumuz regional state, western Ethiopia, aiming to determine the bee spacing and cell dimensions of honeybee race and recommended an appropriate bee spacing and cell dimension for Apis mellifera scutellata. Wombera and Pawe districts were purposively selected to represent highland and lowland agro-ecologies respectively. The measurement of bee space, cell diameter, cell depth comb thickness and hive dimension were taken from 20 traditional hives at each agro-ecology by using caliper to 0.1mm. Collected data were analyzed in descriptive statistics, independent t-test, correlation and General Linear Model (GLM) procedures using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 20 software. The study results revealed that the mean value of bee space, cell depth, cell diameter and comb thickness were 16.5±0.5 mm, 10.4±0.06mm, 4.68±0.03mm, and 19.9±0.14mm respectively. The hive width and length was 27.1±0.5 cm and 76.5±0.9 cm respectively. The results of bee space and comb thickness showed significance difference among districts (p<0.05), whereas cell depth, cell diameter, hive length and hive width were not difference among districts (p>0.05). In conclusion, there were variations in bee space and comb thickness within the same honeybee’s race in different agro-ecologies but this needs designing of new casting molds and box hives pertinent to the agro-ecologies.

Keywords: bee space, cell depth, cell diameter, comb thickness, hive dimension