On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, BOGANSKY,RONALD J. wrote:
 However I believe that
> for a queen to stay in one place we need to give her what she wants; empty
> comb.  IMHO that includes drone comb.  I have had (what I believe happened)
> a queen cross two supers of full/capped honey and lay eggs in drone cells on
> burr comb.  She was not interested in the worker cells only drone.  As a
> side note, if there is sufficient drone comb available, I also noticed that
> repairs to damaged comb, which usually results in drone comb, are repaired
> using worker cells.

I am sure that there is some balance of drone comb and worker comb
that colonies try to maintain. When drawing out new with equal
strength colonies some will draw lovely even combs and others will
insist on drawing drone comb sideways between the sheets of worker
comb foundation. It would be interesting to try an experiment to see
if providing a frame of drone comb would eliminate this urge to build
drone comb. (It may be a shortage of drones rather than a shortage of
drone comb which causes this behavior)



 Donald Aitken
Edmonton Alberta Canada