Dee: Now for workers to lay fertilized egges is good too, and a great
back up system. and intercastes have been written about going back
decades.......but how to trigger and use them!!!

Reply: No, workers do not lay fertilized eggs. They may very rarely be
female, but they are never fertilized.

Dee:  So you tell me then, just what are cape bee take overs then,
other then those that really don't know what is going on!

Reply: This, from someone who does know what is "going on", Madeleine Beekman:

> Given that the current *Capensis calamity* is caused by the clonal offspring of one Capensis worker, it is interesting to ponder if that ancestral worker had unique characteristics or if selection for increased competitiveness among workers has predisposed many Capensis workers toward reproductive parasitism.

> The mixing of Capensis with non- Capensis genotypes within one colony results in a cascade of events caused by pheromonal imbalances between the two subspecies, ultimately resulting in the death of the host colony due to the *lack of workers that actually perform worker tasks*.

> When workers are thelytokous, workers of different subfamilies are selected to compete over which individuals produce the next generation of queens, and an evolutionary arms race over worker-reproductive competitiveness ensues. The end result appears to be the inability of workers to distinguish between eggs laid by a queen and those laid by workers, probably because all eggs now appear to be queen laid. This failure provides enhanced opportunities for intraspecific parasitism both by natal and non-natal workers and is particularly lethal when subspecies are mixed anthropogenically [ ... that is, by ignorant beekeepers ]

see:
"When Workers Disunite: Intraspecific Parasitism by Eusocial Bees"
Madeleine Beekman and Benjamin P. Oldroyd

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