On Sun, 2006-07-30 at 18:26 -0400, Dick Allen wrote: > Was the original queen from the hive in question > from an open mated source or was she instrumentally inseminated? I cannot discuss this as I was simply reminding members of Murray's post. The original issue was bees moving eggs and I have seen enough evidence that they do, for example, new cells raised after a queen is removed from a hive, in natural swarm cells rather than emergency cells, in cups already drawn but with no eggs in at the time of the queen's removal. Murray's evidence is circumstantial or stronger, but we are talking about obviously rare events, which would have to be researched as such or evidence collected from the List as a start. Other sciences are adept at finding rare events to test some theory or other, but perhaps no-one has set anything up to test the hypothesis that bees can and will collect eggs from another colony. It is not just survival of genes, but survival of a species. In this case, different races of the same basic species were involved. james kilty http://www.honeymountain.co.uk -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---