"My point, which obviously I've not convinced people of - in addition to the known drift factors there's something innate to colonies that determine whether they tend to stay neutral or gain or lose forager bees."

I have heard it claimed that if you have two nucs side by side, both with mated laying queens, that if you swap positions one will frequently  end up with a bunch of extra bees.  If you do the swap repeatedly at two week intervals after a few swaps one will have almost all the bees and the other very few.  The unproven hypothesis was that the one that ended up with lots of bees had a queen that produced more pheromone and that was what attracted the bees.  Seems to me if that is the case breeding for queens that attracted bees might be desirable in preventing early supersedure.  Has anyone done any experiments along such lines?  Can anyone confirm that this swapping result really happens sometimes and if so how often?

Dick
 
             

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