In article <000601c22599$174de4c0$2e27e150@cushman>, Dave Cushman
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>I can state that in three
>of the cases that I mentioned I passed the entire colony through a queen
>excluder to seive out any possible runts. (the laying workers went through
>the seive)

This does not surprise me, as intercastes are often undersized
(thoracically) and sometimes can pass through normal excluders at will.

Worst experience with intercastes we had was a couple of years ago when
a queen shipment was sent to us. It never arrived, but we made up the
splits on the assurance it was on the way (it was from a regular and
reliable supplier). When it did not arrive and a replacement set was
being prepared we went round the splits and destroyed all the emergency
cells at about 10 days after making them up. To our surprise about one
in three of these went on to raise further cells from very mature
larvae, sometimes the cells just looked like an enlarged drone cell, a
mere bump on the comb face. Yet out of these came tiny queens and we had
an awful, and only partially successful, task in getting rid of these
runts.

Despite our efforts some went on to make drone layers, but most mated
and laid, apparently satisfactorily despite their small size. However,
at least half of them then superceded within a few weeks, and others
failed in the coming winter. Only a couple carried on to the following
spring and then superceded.

These things were sometimes relatively normal looking, but sometimes
just the size of a worker but with a differently shaped abdomen. These
tiny ones were almost impossible to spot unless you knew what you were
looking for and anticipated their presence. They just mingle in with the
workers and do not skip around on top of the mass of bees like a virgin
does.

The smaller they were the greater the chance of them being a drone only
layer. In three years since, over about 5000 colony/seasons I have had
only one case in which I am sure there was a laying worker present, and
this was a multiple requeening failure and took about 6 weeks for the
first eggs to appear from the workers (it was a bad site for mating and
it turned out that there were birds (sandmartins) preying on the flying
bees).
--
Murray McGregor