Hi Peter

> I have already explained in great detail why the Cape Bee is
> different. But to elaborate further: evidently laying workers are
> present in all colonies but under normal circumstances, their eggs are
> eaten by the other workers. This is called worker policing and serves
> the purpose of ensuring that all the workers, drones and queens
> produced in the colony come from the reigning queen.

We are not talking about laying workers in the sense that they can occur 
in queenless colonies. We are talking about a very small number of 
worker bees in a small percentage of colonies and we describe them as 
anarchic, because their behaviour does not fit the norm. This is partly 
due to minor development of functional ovioles (much smaller number than 
queens) these can be considered almost as pseudo queens and they mainly 
lay drones. In any case the majority of these eggs are eaten, but 
something of the order of one in a million develops into an adult drone 
and is added to the available gene pool. We know these drones are 
fertile as they can be reared to maturity under lab conditions.

Of this one in a million there will be a small percentage of eggs that 
become diploid during the early stages of development and these eggs can 
become workers or queens according to how the bees feed the resulting 
larva. Sounds good as a backup mechanism, but when you realise that the 
number of times that diploid eggs occurs is again about one in a million 
of those that survive eating, then we are not likely to be overrun by 
bees that exhibit this trait.

For more info look at the work of the following...
Francis Ratnieks,
http://www.lasi.group.shef.ac.uk/flwrpub.html
Ben Oldroyd
http://www.bio.usyd.edu.au/Social_InsectsLab/Ben/benpublications.htm
Madeline Beekman
http://www.bio.usyd.edu.au/Social_InsectsLab/Madeleine/madeleinepublications.htm
Steve Martin
http://www.lasi.group.shef.ac.uk/smpub.html


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://melliferabees.net Email: [log in to unmask]
Short FallBack M/c, Build 7.21/2.01
Son of ORAC M/c, Build 5.o1/2.o1

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