>
> >Does this imply that African bees 47% of the time, do not raise emergency
> cells from worker cells as do European bees?
>

Winston did not make implications.  But this appeared to be the case in the
test colonies that he made queenless.

>Randy presented reports by Winston showing much more eggs emerging in
queen cells in african hives, when there was no access by queen. This
sounds very much like workers making viable eggs.

That was also my first thought.  But Winston was studying scutellata, not
capensis.  Thelytoky is to the best of my knowledge rare in scutellata,
similar to European races.  Plus, workers of those races typically police
against worker-laid eggs, so long as a queen is present.  It takes a while
after the removal of the queen and brood for workers to start developing
their ovaries.

The sudden appearance of numerous eggs after the dequeening in Winston's
test hives strongly suggests that eggs or young larvae were moved (I reread
the papers a number of times to look for reason to question).

Interesting how so many have a kneejerk skepticism that workers can move
eggs, without any observations to support such skepticism (the skepticism
is based upon assumption rather than observation).  There are a number of
good scientific studies in which the researchers actually looked, and found
pretty convincing evidence of egg or larval movement.  Many of us also have
observed instances where we suspected the same.

But enough idle talk.  It's easy to test. Get away from your computer
screens and test it yourself and report.  I plan to do so this week, out of
simple curiosity.

My plan: take a frame of eggs and young larvae, press in several queen cell
cups, and place the frame in a queenless cell starter.  If I find larvae in
the cups that I inserted, either thelytoky suddenly took place (highly
unlikely due to the short duration of queenlessness), or eggs/larvae were
moved.  Better yet would be to do with dark bees in the starter, with a
yellow bee brood frame.

I'd be happy to hear suggestions.
-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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