I hope you will excuse me for putting in my twopennyworth in to the
discussion on whether or not bees steal eggs.  I don't know the
answer but would like to quote from ROB Manley's  'Honey Farming'.
 
Manley was one of the first UK beekeepers who actually derived his
living from beekeeping,  was very dismissive of the contemporary UK
beekeeping methods (1920-1940ish)  and something of a fan of American
hives and techniques.  Also I think he wrote extremely well and
was/is a great authority about bees.
 
Beginning of quote
 
'I should like,  here,  to mention one very interesting circumstance
that all beekeepers are almost certain to meet sooner or later.  It
will happen sometimes,  even in the best regulated of apiaries,  that
queens or virgin queens will be lost,  leaving their colonies,
generally speaking,  hopelessly queenless.  Now although such stocks,
unless assisted by the beekeeper who may give unsealed brood,  a
queen cell or even a fertile queen,  are in a completely hopeless
situation in nine cases out of ten,  yet every now and then there
will be found in one of these queenless colonies a perfectly normal
queen cell from which a perfectly normal virgin will emerge and mate
quite successfully.  The same thing does occasionally happen in
colonies that have laying workers in them.  Now where does the egg
that produces the queen in such cases come from?  Many theories have
been put forward from time to time,  including the (to my thinking)
quite preposterous one that worker bees that are without the means of
raising a queen will go out on a robbing expedition,  and entering
the hive of some queen right colony,  carry off an egg from it to
their own home and there rear a queen for themselves.  That bees will
move eggs from one part of their hive to another is quite credible,
but that they should enter the hive of another colony for the purpose
of stealing an egg seems to me to be extremely unlikely,  and to
assume an altogether impossible degree of intelligence,  courage and
restraint on the part of an insect.
 
There are other ways of accounting for this phenomenon..  It seems to
me that such queens may sometimes be raised from eggs that have been
lying neglected in some chilly corner of the combs,  until found and
tended by the workers.  I do not know for certain,  but I think it
likely that bees'  eggs may remain inert when neglected in this way,
but may well retain their viability.
 
There is another way of accounting for the presence of good queen
cells where we should not expect them to be possible.  The laying
worker is a very common occupant of queenless stocks,  as I have
mentioned earlier in this essay,  and it has recently been shown that
on rare occasions - perhaps not so rare either - these bees can and
do lay eggs that develop into females,  and will produce queens if
fed for that purpose.  It has also been proved that queens that have
been confined to their hives so that they have been unable to mate,
have laid eggs from which queens and workers have been raised.  I do
not know how just this can be accounted for,  but I see no reason why
an occasional diploid ovum should not miss its reduction division and
so,  without conjugation with a male cell,  be furnished with the
full set of 32 chromosomes and consequently develop into a female
bee.
 
Although these female cells are sometimes found,  let no
inexperienced beekeeper,  should he find cells that look like queen
cells in some colony that is believed to be hopelessly queenless,
conclude that all must be well.  These cases are comparatively rare,
and in the great majority of cases such cells will be built over male
larvae,  and their contents will be quite useless.  Such cells are
very common indeed,  but they can generally be distinguished from
genuine queen cells by their appearance.  They are smoother,  and
have thinner walls; in fact to the experienced eye are usually
unmistakable.  I have known drones in these cells to reach the stage
of becoming coloured;  but have never known a drone to emerge from
one.'
 
End of quote.
 
Of course Manley would not of known about A. m.  Capensis,  found in
the extreme of South Africa only  (and certainly not in the UK!) that
have a very high rate of parthogenic female eggs produced by laying
workers after queen loss.  See 'The Biology of the Honey Bee'  by
Mark L Winston.
 
This is perhaps interesting in that it might indicate that other
races are capable of the same trick as well  (as Manley suggested).
 
Best wishes
 
Joe Hemmens