I wrote:

> They marked large numbers of bees in their home apiary and then went 
> looking for them in the surrounding area.

I should perhaps have made it clear that the search was for bees that had 
drifted into other hives.

It showed that bees readily joined other hives well over a mile from their 
home apiary.

It is said that up to 30% of bees in a hive originate elsewhere.  This is 
why we take young bees from the centre of the broodnest when conducting wing 
morphometry tests as that ensures that we are testing the progeny of the 
queen in which we are interested.

Best wishes

Peter
52.194546, -1.673618 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm