randy oliver kirjoitti 2017-05-14 21:10:

   It takes a while
> after the removal of the queen and brood for workers to start 
> developing
> their ovaries.

But we know that there is laying workers all the time in hive, I recall 
research telling that several % of drones in normal hives were not from 
queen, but from workers.

When queen is separated from part of hive / brood with excluder the 
situation is abnormal for bees so I think its quite logical that these 
laying workers use this situation for their benefit. And the other 
workers are not so keen in removing the eggs as they do normally.

This is a survival mechanism for bees, how to pass on genes when 
problems with queens.

> 
> 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.

Exactly the reasoning I have been using, but until now my result has 
been different. I admit that I haven't researched throughoutly in this 
but have read quite many articles about it during years. Many tell that 
workers are capable of making egg, also diploid eggs.   I have not found 
study that would have eliminated this factor in 'egg moving' so I have 
hard time believing that bees move eggs. I am happy to change my view 
based on evidence.


> 
> 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.

I think this is good and I encourage others to try it as well. And share 
the results in here please. I have to see if I can borrow a frame of 
carniolan eggs to see the difference ( I have italians and buckfast)

But it will be a while before I can do it. After long winter willows are 
just starting to bloom here, lakes opened last week from ice.

I use a lot of queenless starts. I see sometimes eggs in them  (in queen 
cups) , and I have always thought that it's the workers. There is no 
frames with eggs moved into these starts.



Ari Seppälä
Finland

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