"Ted J. Hancock" wrote:

>  Since laying workers are indistinguishable from other workers (I've never
> seen =
> one laying an egg, and I expect few have ever seen one, period),

Having a penchance for going into laying worker mode at the drop of a hat, a
number of A. m. capensis laying workers have been observed doing just that.
Indeed photographs exist. Main differences - in our case - are distended, but
more often swollen abdomens and the k-wing syndrome, normally associated with
T-mites. Perhaps also due to the swollen abdomen.


>  Kind of off the topic =
> here - but I used a marked queen in  an observation hive once at a fair. =
>  The queen had a white disk glued to her thorax with a black '99' =
> clearly visible in the centre of the disk.  To my surprise over 50% of =
> the general public asked if this disk was natural

All the time. To the extent that one often does not get asked directly, but
watch their faces ... and you know what they are thinking! So we tell them.

Robert Post