On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, RICHARD BARNES wrote:
 
> Fellow Bee-L'ers, I have a question?
>
> How many different patterns of colors do you find in your hives?
>
> I opened a hive that had been vacant since last year.  A feral colony moved
> in and set up house keeping in July.  Lucky for me the moths hadn't done
> much damage to the comb left by the former residents (pesticide kill)  so
> the hive may be OK.   I ask the above question because these bees have many
> different patterns of stripes.  Some are the standard 6 striped italians,
> some have only very light stripes but the stinger end of the bee is dark
> nearly a third up the thorax.  I even have some bees with no noticable
> stripes just what at eye site appears to be a yellow bee the drones are
> solid dark and about 10% of the workers are solid dark.  The bees seem to
> all be getting along.  I remember reading somewhere on the Bee-L that if a
> hive is distroyed, or moved, the bees left behind will join a local colony.
> Could this bee what happened?  The hive is in an area where a lot of new
> construction is going on with clearing of all of the trees for the quarter
> mile west of the hive.
> Richard Barnes
> [log in to unmask]
>
 
 
I would say that what you have there is a queen who was mated with several
different drones.  Since only one sperm will combine with each egg, the
new bees will be a combination of the queen's genes and one of each type
of drones.
 
                          Ian Watson
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