At 11:01 AM 4/15/2004, you wrote:
>   What I found interesting, was the white eyed drones in the hive.
>Did anybody ever study these white eyed drones in depth? Can they be
>reproduced? Or are they a result of a laying worker?


To quote brother adam "White eyes, which do often appear, are due to a loss
of all the colour alleles."
It tends to happen much more frequently in drones because they have only
one set of chromosomes and thus none can be hidden by a dominant gene.
White eyed workers (and queens) are possible, but highly unlikely since it
would require a queen mating with a white eyed drone which seems likely
because they seem to be blind and get lost on orientation flights.

It does not indicate a laying worker.  The same mutation can occur in
drones from queen or worker laid eggs.

Some more info:
http://members.aol.com/glennapiar/oddball.html
http://www.beesource.com/pov/usda/breeding2.htm
http://www.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/books/FrAdam/breeding/partI85en.html

-Tim

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