Hi All

Just to comment on the suggestion that laying workers cannot fly - I
beleive this is highly unlikely - a worker bee can fly carrying a
dead drone - well over twice her weight. She can fly carrying a
polystyrene ping pong bal!! A worker is a machine - hse can fly very
well - in fact a queens wings are so similar to a workers, that if
this laying worker cannot fly concept were correct, a laying worker
would have to be bigger than a queen.

I think that what is happening here is that if one makes the bees fly
back to a colony the elusive laying workers which smell like queens
are not allowed into the hive and are killed by the guards at the
entrance.

I have often dumped laying workers here on the ground and within half
an hour all bees are gone somewhere (don't know where). I know our
bees can end up in hives up to five kilometers away from their
original hives from my observations of marked bees from Rhodes
experiments that end up in my own hives five k's away!!

Keep well

Garth
Garth Cambray           Camdini Apiaries
15 Park Road
Grahamstown             Apis mellifera capensis
6139 South Africa

Time = Honey