>
>Your feeling may well be right, there is quite a bit of behaviour that stems
>from the genetic differences within the groups of sisters in the hive...
>This is only fairly recently being pursued.
>  Dave Cushman


This summer I have been trying to introduce SMR stock into my apiaries. I
bought some breeder queens, and proceeded to raise daughters. My usual
acceptance of cells in my nucs is 75% - 85%. With these new breeders, I am
only getting about 55%. I've looked at my cell building, and can find no
fault. Opening the cells on the 10th day after graft shows a healthy
virgin. I use cell protectors, so I know the queens are hatching. I keep
the cells warm on their way to the nucs, and don't jostle them around. We
have had a super honey flow. The queens I have gotten are nice big fatties.
The nucs that don't accept the cells often raise their own cell. On queen
catching day, they have an unmated virgin.
         Not all are like this. Some have laying workers in as little as
two weeks. In one nuc, my helper was looking for the laying queen. "I got
eggs," he says. Then..."I got the -itch, but she looks a little small."
         So I look and see the queen is a virgin...raised from the last
queens larvae. So I tell Bobby he had better find the other queen, as the
virgin couldn't have layed all those eggs. He looks and says there is none.
I look and ...I see a worker laying an egg. Hmm. I thought bees wouldn't
tolerate a virgin when they had laying workers. We let it go, and the
virgin is mated and is now laying.

         Anyway, I can't really think of anything else it could be but turf
war among the castes of daughters in the hive...or something like that.

Mike