Hi Jörg
I could try re-writing it with less jargon if you like.
There is a gene (called csd) that controls gender in bees. It comes in 15-20 variants (alleles) in most bee populations.
A normal, fertilised egg laid in a worker cell would have two different variants. A normal unfertilised egg in a drone cell has only one set of chromosomes and so has only one variant.
Carrying two variants makes you female if you are a bee. Carrying only one variant makes you male.
Virgin queens may mate with a drone or drones with the same variant as one of the pair she carries. That means that some fertilised eggs laid in worker cells will carry two copies which are the same. These would make 'diploid drones' except that workers are on the lookout for such individuals and usually eat them at a young stage. Hence the colony avoids making drones in the wrong place at the expense of a patchy brood pattern.
Gavin
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