> Pete, your analogy was perfect.  I'm curious as to why you apply it in fun?  

I don't think that 20 bumble bees in a box can be used to represent a colony of bees, any more than a bunch of guys sitting around a campfire can be used to plumb the dynamics of urban population growth. I think they constructed a model based on what they wanted to see happen, and shoehorned bumble bees into it. 

Real studies of bumble bees have shown:

> it is clear from our data that, irrespective of treatment, a large intrinsic variation in reproductive success existed among our colonies, which obscured the differences among the groups. Because all colonies (apart from mortality rates) were placed in identical environments, this variation suggests intrinsic sources of colony vigour of yet unknown origin.

Variation in Life-History Pattern in Relation to Worker Mortality in the Bumble-Bee, Bombus lucorum 
Author(s): C. B. Muller and P. Schmid-Hempel

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