A question was recently asked about whether bees move eggs and or               
larvae.  Mark Winston and I once did a study in which we made                   
colonies of Africanized bees queenless, then followed all events                
related to queen rearing and swarming.  After becoming queenless, the           
bees constructed queen cups that were empty; following that either              
eggs or larvae (Mark would have the details) appeared in the cells              
and were reared into queens.  Since the queen had been removed and              
females (queens) were reared, it is logical to assume that the eggs             
were moved by the bees.                                                         
    The second situation we have seen several times, in which queen             
cells are produced in honey supers above a queen excluder.  In these            
cases all other brood was contained below the queen excluder, so I am           
fairly certain that the queen did not lay the eggs in the queen cells           
herself.  Again it is most likely that workers moved the eggs/larvae            
up into the cells.                                                              
    It seems virtually impossible to imagine that bees would steal              
eggs or larvae from other colonies.                                             
    There is another possibility to explain the queenless colony that           
got a new queen.  It is well known that worker bees can lay eggs, but           
usually these are haploid (unfertilized) and develop into drones.               
One bee race, the Cape honey bee (A. mellifera capensis) is notorious           
for having workers that lay diploid eggs (with two sets of                      
chromosomes).  The number of chromosomes gets halved in the formation           
of the egg, but then a polar body with one set of chromosomes fuses             
with the egg nucleus to form a diploid nucleus that is analagous to a           
fertilized egg, and the bees can rear females from these.  It turns             
out this physiological adaptation is present at low frequency in                
other bee races.  I believe it was W.C. Roberts or O. Mackensen                 
discovered that 1-2% of colonies of other bee races, in the absence             
of brood from which to rear a queen, would still eventually become              
queen-right, apparently through the production of diploid worker eggs.          
    Hope this may clarify the situation somewhat.                               
                                                                                
                                    Dr. Gard W. Otis                            
                                    Dept. of Environmental Biology              
                                    University of Guelph                        
                                    Guelph, Ontario                             
                                    Canada   N1G 2W1                            
                                    [log in to unmask]