>
> > I'm also seeing late drone rearing in some of my colonies that I've
> suspected might be preparations for suicide swarms.


There would be very little evolutionary pressure for bees to produce
suicide swarms.  Thus, I suggest that perhaps we be overlooking something
to call them such.

It may be more accurate to call them "usurpation swarms"--in which the old
queen and a group of workers usurps an established colony already prepared
for winter.  This would be highly adaptive genetically, and is a trait
exhibited by ancestral Apis mellifera, as well as documented by Dr Wyatt
Mangum, and observed by me and others in non-Africanized bees.  it would
also explain the spike in swarming long documented in September.


--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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