Quote:
>In Dr Mackensen's journal of Economic Entomology Vol 36, No 3 pages 465
>and 466 is where I get Dr Mackensen's figures for the percentage of virgin
>queens producing female offspring and also in the percentage of females
>produced by individual queens. Caucasian 23%, Italian 3-banded 9%, golden
>Italian queens 57%.

Virgin queens?  I thought we were talking about laying workers.

Bob's original statement:
>The most startling new information I heard came from Dr. Gloria Hoffman of
>the Tucson Bee Lab. Dr. Hoffman said she considers Arizona now 100%
>Africanized. The black Africanized bees of Arizona have been showing
>capensis traits with intercasts with laying worker queens.

Quote:
>Now Mackensen also stated in his paper that it was estimated, however,
>that not more than 1 per cent of the eggs of any of the queens tested
>developed into workers. This is good his saying this, for this relates to
>the buckshot pattern we see in the field nowadays.

99% drone brood is not buckshot pattern. How could a colony survive if the
brood was 99% drones?

Quote:
>Mackensen also stated in this paper in his last sentense "However, the
>data here presented indicate that this characteristic is more widespread
>than has been commonly believed and suggest aht the many queens that have
>been reported to appear unexpectedly in hopelessly queenless colonies can
>best be explained as having arisen from eggs laid by laying workers."

Right. He forced *virgin queens* to begin laying and the brood from them
was 99% drone brood, which means occasionally a female egg turned up. Could
have come from a laying worker. We are back to the beginning which is, we
don't know.

Mackensen also says:
>Either the queen or the workers could have laid the eggs that developed
>into most of the parthenogenetic workers; however, it was proved that the
>queen laid a few of them [he describes his proof].
>
>The data given in this paper give no proof that parthenogenetic females
>occur in the Caucasian and Italian races in their native lands. The
>strains tested could contain some African blood, since bees have been
>imported from many parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia into the United
>States. Between 1866 and 1880, many attempts were made, some successfully,
>to introduce Cyprian, Syrian, Egyptian, and Punic bees.