I think that quite a few threads on here recently are forgetting a 
simple principle, that a simple explanation usually fits best and is 
usually, granted not without exception, the one that turns out to be the 
factual one.

I get drone brood sporadically above the excluders in at least a third 
of all colonies in spring and early summer. (The time they are most 
likely to be wanting to raise drones) We NEVER get this pattern later in 
the season when the drone raising urge is less or absent (exit the 
laying workers or virgins explanantion)

Usually it is the drone patches from previous extracting damage repaired 
by the bees that get it, but have seen, like Trevor describes, drone in 
worker cells too, all up above the excluder with no other evidence that 
the queen has ever been there.

I believe that most, if not all, these eggs originate from the 
queen.........and find the questions about OK, why are they drone then, 
to be odd.

I have seen with my own eyes, on MANY occasions, bees carrying away 
eggs. Never actually seen them being deposited in cells by the workers, 
but they must take them somewhere. The secret is that these are NOT eggs 
already laid in cells whereby the queen will already, by gauging the 
cell, have eiher issued a fertilised or unfertilised egg. These eggs are 
taken directly from the queens abdomen, and never were in a cell, so the 
likelihood is that without cell guaging, it is unlikely that the egg 
will have been fertilised, and the results are almost universally drone, 
irrespective of what type of cell the bees deposit it in.

So, as far as I see it, at least in our own operation, there is a very 
simple explanation and the trait is unimportant.
-- 
Murray McGregor

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