I'm Ian Douglas, I wrote the article.
The reason for the strips was not to save money but to encourage the bees to build their own comb. The weren't building at all when the frames were blank, so strips (they were a bit wide. Thinner ones that that were too brittle) were a step towards providing frame without using fully wired foundation.
I don't know whether cell size makes any difference to the varroa mites. I'd always used foundation before, and wanted to experiment. If anyone has a link to any real research on the topic, I'd be very interesting to see it.
By the way, Chris isn't my mentor. He's my father-in-law and was visiting, so he came along to help out. I don't have a single mentor, but have had lot of help from Robin Dartington and a lot of different people at the North London Beekeepers. Mostly it's just me and Ted Hooper.
The experiment wasn't a great success as detailed here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/beekeeping/8257030/Beekeeping-diary-winter-loss.html
Not enough bees, too much snow.
sorry to hear of your bees demise. hope it hasn't put you off!
sorry no offence was intended.. the saving money bit was more in respoce to the bowed wax in your frames.. had you bought some new wireless wax it would have been a lot easier to cut into starter strips and not knarled them up in the process. i understand what you were trying to do with them building, just seemed mad to have spent a fortune on a beehause and then not the small amount on getting foundation that is easy to cut into strips without bending as you cut the wire. (hadn't read your previous thread on the subject at the time to know it was a freebe) ( actually am planning to let my bees go eaunaturelle at some point, but will probably do it brood frame by broodframe when they are a stong colony)
having bowed wax in the frames leads to some cells not being long enough for pupae, so if eggs are even laid in them the workers often remove them, or the cell gets build out into the right length but bu$$ering up beespace, encouraging brace com etc. and some cells being too long, also then prefered for stores, or if layed in. the cells that are stopped at the right depth but in spaces that longer cells could have been made create indentations, these combined with the cells extending into beespace lead to more bees being killed by rolling and squashing between frames during inspections.
probably not a big factor in their demise, but every little bee helps, especially in the last few winters.
research wise on cell size sure if you look around on the net you'll find research on both sides of the fence. but there is a general consensus that drone cells, which are larger, definately have more verroa, i personally think it's as much to do with piggybacking into other hives as a method of spreading of infestations with drones as well, no idea if that has ever been looked into. sure more learned people would be able to point you to lots of papers.
For a non peer reviewed idea with pretty pickies of how bees naturally do it have a look at sites like
this
if your wanting to treat the beehause like a top bar hive but with frames it's probably a good idea to read up on top bar hives - plenty of threads in here using the search function.. often refered to as TBH and loooaaads of stuff on other websites.. chat to a few people on here who run them, search previous threads and ask questions and get as much info as you can. using starter strips, or lines of wax, or wax rubbed/melted onto a protrusion for the start of comb building IMHO is a pretty fundamental thing.. though usually if you do not provide it then they ignore the bars and build wild comb willy nilly rather than not building at all (perhaps a sign your colony wasn't doing too well already).
If your mentors have less expereince in it (TBH) then suppliment the things they have good knowledge in with info from elsewhere you have the best possible chance next time round, 'cos from what i can tell it's a quite different kettle of fish from the beekeeking i learned before.