I forwarded Dick's mail to Dr Neal Anthwal, a medical researcher (but not a beekeeper), who replied:

"Well, unless honeybees do something weird (which is not beyond possibility), yes there should be genetic variation in the haploid drones, as there will be a shuffling of the genetic pack when the queens diploid egg cell precursors are differentiated in to haploid eggs (i.e. meiosis). During meiosis, parts of the maternal chromosome is swapped with the corresponding part of the paternal chromosome (and vice versa) before they are separated to for two haploid cells. 


I think you should ignore mutations, as 99.99 recurring times out of 100 these will be detrimental to the survival of the bee embryo and they won't even make it to larval stages. Beneficial mutations are very very rare. 


Other variation will be due to epigenetic factors, as has been pointed out. Epigenetics, in the most technical sense, results in modulation in the levels of a gene's expression, so in the strictest sense won't result in genetic variation. Though it's quite right to say these effects are strong and result in true phenotypic variation.


hope that helps.


Neal"

Chris










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