>This falls contrary to what I have read and thought,  in that pretty much any drifter with cargo was accepted.

I’ve often seen field bees laden with pollen being turned away at the entrances only to fly over and enter the hive next door.  I’ve also noticed them entering a hive, but then quickly coming back out and flying over the the next hive, so I’m not sure if they were refused once inside or simply figured out they were in the wrong place.

We known that colonies can vary with regard to being more or less defensive.  Perhaps being more or less 'accepting of drifters' has to do with that quality.

With respect to robbing, I recently observed one of my colonies spending all of one day and part of the next on an obvious robbing spree.  Interestingly, it was the only colony out of twelve that was doing so.   I’m not sure if that was because that colony was the only one to discover the robbing opportunity or because it was expressing the propensity to rob in contrast to the rest.  Either way, I’ll be paying particularly close attention to the infestation rate on that one.

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