Hi Waldemar


> For a worker to lay an egg that would result in a laying queen, the worker itself would have to go on mating flights and get mated.  Is this what happens?

No, The diploid eggs laid by thelytokious bees are formed from haploid
eggs that have a modified division process in the early stages
of cell division...

Below is the process as described in Capensis

Introduction, Production of parthenogenetic female eggs - thelytoky
Verma and Ruttner (1983) showed that the secondary oocyte fuses with a 
polar body in the content of the unfertilized oocyte during meiosis. 
This automictic mechanism was suggested by Tucker (1958) and allows no 
combination of loci in the offspring, unless crossing over mediates the 
exchange of linkage groups. Moritz and Haberl (1994) could not detect 
crossing over in the formation of these diploid offspring, hence all 
offspring of a single capensis worker are genetically identical, mother 
and daughter therefore form a genetic clone.
Ruttner(1988) claimed that only a single recessive allele, th, at one 
locus determines workers to perform thelytokous parthenogenesis. The 
thelytokous parthenogenesis has been explained as an adaptation to the 
harsh, wet, windy conditions where the queen is much more on a risk 
getting lost during her mating flights (Tribe 1983, Moritz and Kauhausen 
1984, Moritz 1986). But paradoxically, the highest frequencies of 
matings occurs in months in which the winds are most intense (Allsopp 
and Hepburn 1997). Referring to the high mating frequency detected in A. 
m. capensis (Estoup et al. 1994, Moritz et al. 1996, Kryger 1997)
the mating risk of the queens seems not to be higher than in European races.

Taken from...
Regulation of reproductive dominance hierarchiesin Apis mellifera 
capensis workers Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen 
Gradesdoctor rerum naturalium (Dr. rer.nat.) vorgelegt der 
Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlich-Technischen Fakultät 
(mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlicher Bereich) der
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenbergvon Frau Ute Simongeb. am: 
11.08.1967 in Emden Gutachter1. Prof. R.F.A. Moritz2. Prof. N. 
Koeniger3. Prof. R.M. Crewe


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable)

-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and  other info ---