Bill Van Roekel said:

> I have seen hives on a number of occasions where a large
> proportion of the bees were very dark(black/gray), with a
> substantial number of bees being uniformly golden/yellow.

I'll do the best I can to answer off the top of my head, but I
am using a notebook computer in the kitchen, in between
monitoring 5 cooktop burners and two ovens.  (Thanksgiving
for 27 tomorrow, and we are on a tight kitchen schedule...)

Was this the progeny of a marked, bought-from-a-breeder
queen?  If so, I'd bet serious money that you had a two-queen
hive.

If it was a supercedure queen, or a "home-grown" queen, this
sounds like a result of mating between Italian and Caucasian
queens and drones.  Are most of your bees "light" or "dark"?
What do beekeepers near you have?  The answer may provide
you with a much more credible reason for your coloration
observations.

> Although I have not seen proof, this indicates to me that the
> sperm is kept separate, and worker eggs are fertilized with
> sperm from one father for a period of time, and then from another,
> etc.  So, your next point would not be accurate either.  There could
> be ten groups of workers (based on fathers), but only a large number
> from perhaps three, the others dying off before the fourth group is laid.

All I can do is point you to is a book on basic bee biology, and
suggest you look at the queen's spermateca.  It is one large
container.  Sperm are alive, and tend to move.  I don't know of
any possible mechanism that might keep sperm isolated
"by drone", and I must conclude that there is none.  I can only
conclude that the mix of sperm, and hence, use of sperm can
only be viewed as "random" or something very close to random.

...and Dave Hamilton said:

> If you "assume" that each drone contributes an equal amount of
> sperm .. doubtful, doubtful .. you could just as easily "assume"
> the first fills the spermateca and the rest are "for fun" ..
> or maybe don't assume at all.

Rather than assuming, lets use deduction:

a) Multiple matings are a known fact.

a1)  I cannot discuss possible recreational sex among
      bees without endangering the G-rating of this list.   :)

b)  A skilled debater might argue that the multiple matings
     are nothing but "insurance" against a drone with a low
     sperm volume.  If this were the case, there would be
     many documented cases of a (singly-mated) queen laying
     nothing but identical twins (all being full sisters, the product
     of one queen and one drone).  The opposite is true.  The
     literature documents multiple successful matings as the
     norm.  (By "multiple", I mean many more than two.)

c) Once we consider multiple matings as "documented", and
    also consider the relative sizes of the queen's spermateca
    versus the drones' seminal vesicles, we must conclude
    that no one drone could ever "fill" the queen's spermateca,
    and conclude that multiple matings are a biological requirement
    to give a queen a "full stock" of sperm.

d)  Even without knowledge of relative sizes of sexual organs,
     the queen must be able to "take advantage" of multiple
     matings, or there would be no point to multiple matings.

I hope the above explains the reasoning behind the "assumption",
and makes the "assumption" more of a "conclusion", one based
upon generally-accepted and well-known documented facts.

Regardless, the "half the colony" nature of swarms is well-known,
and has been well-known for some time.  Even if one were to start with
an assumption of "3 drones" or "4 drones", one STILL has the same
problem with basic math.  1/3rd or 1/4th is noticeably less than 1/2,
to even the casual observer.

So, I'll ask again - what possible impact can "fatherhood" have on
"who stays and who goes" in swarming, given that it would be very
highly unlikely for 1/2 the hive to be the progeny of a single drone?

I just don't buy it.  "Fatherhood" does not explain the actions of
roughly 1/2 the bees, no matter how one slices it.

I don't claim any personal insight in any of this.
All I am doing is trying to think clearly and in a non-fuzzy
manner about what has been published by multiple reliable
sources.

        jim

        farmageddon