> but where are the different coloured drones coming from?  Drifting?????

Hi there

Probably due to drifting, but remember: the queen is a diploid individual and carries alleles from both her mother and father, so she could have had a yellow colored father and a dark colored mother. 

When the eggs are formed, the chromosome pairs split up, so half the drones would get the paternal chromosomes and half would get the maternal ones. 

To make things even more interesting, there is also recombination just prior to the splitting up, so the drones can have genes from both parents.

PLB

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