I dont see where it would hurt starting out with Small Cell, I dont use it but all my Bee's are from old survival hives and they wasn't getting treated then so I have never treated, now I have only owned 4 types of bee's, Feral's, Kona, PBA's and Russian, just got the Russians this past year, 2 of the Kona's lasted till the second year and one of them lasted 4 years,( lost it this year) have never lost a PBA hive or my removal hives, did lose 2 swarms I went and got this year, all other swarms I got this year I re-queened with a PBA queens or my feral queens and all doing fine......... it is your choice, a lot of people have had good luck with SC but since I never needed it I dont use it, I did try a few sheets this year to see how they would draw it out and they didn't do to bad, cells looked good except were the reinforcing wire ran down the sheet, a few of them cells were larger!!!!!!