Are all memeber of the lsit receiving this post over and over or just me?       
                                                                                
                                                                                
>                                                                               
> A question was recently asked about whether bees move eggs and or             
> larvae.  Mark Winston and I once did a study in which we made                 
> colonies of Africanized bees queenless, then followed all events              
> related to queen rearing and swarming.  After becoming queenless, the         
> bees constructed queen cups that were empty; following that either            
> eggs or larvae (Mark would have the details) appeared in the cells            
> and were reared into queens.  Since the queen had been removed and            
> females (queens) were reared, it is logical to assume that the eggs           
> were moved by the bees.                                                       
>     The second situation we have seen several times, in which queen           
> cells are produced in honey supers above a queen excluder.  In these          
> cases all other brood was contained below the queen excluder, so I am         
> fairly certain that the queen did not lay the eggs in the queen cells         
> herself.  Again it is most likely that workers moved the eggs/larvae          
> up into the cells.                                                            
>     It seems virtually impossible to imagine that bees would steal            
> eggs or larvae from other colonies.                                           
>     There is another possibility to explain the queenless colony that         
> got a new queen.  It is well known that worker bees can lay eggs, but         
> usually these are haploid (unfertilized) and develop into drones.             
> One bee race, the Cape honey bee (A. mellifera capensis) is notorious         
> for having workers that lay diploid eggs (with two sets of                    
> chromosomes).  The number of chromosomes gets halved in the formation         
> of the egg, but then a polar body with one set of chromosomes fuses           
> with the egg nucleus to form a diploid nucleus that is analagous to a         
> fertilized egg, and the bees can rear females from these.  It turns           
> out this physiological adaptation is present at low frequency in              
> other bee races.  I believe it was W.C. Roberts or O. Mackensen               
> discovered that 1-2% of colonies of other bee races, in the absence           
> of brood from which to rear a queen, would still eventually become            
> queen-right, apparently through the production of diploid worker eggs.        
>     Hope this may clarify the situation somewhat.                             
>                                                                               
>                                     Dr. Gard W. Otis                          
>                                     Dept. of Environmental Biology            
>                                     University of Guelph                      
>                                     Guelph, Ontario                           
>                                     Canada   N1G 2W1                          
>                                     [log in to unmask]