Colin Butler, in his book entitled, "The World of the Honeybee"; 1974
revision; p. 43, states that the problem with the theory that pressure is
exerted on the abdomen of the queen when laying in a worker-sized cell,
therefore causing the egg to be fertilized. This as opposed to the larger
size of the drone cell not exerting pressure and allowing the laying of an
unfertilized egg is this (and I quote):

"The obvious difficulty with this theory is that it fails to explain how it
is that a queen will on occasion lay fertilised (sic) worker-eggs in cells
that are only partially built and whose sides are far too short to exert any
pressure whatsoever on her abdomen."

The most plausible explanation is that for some reason the queen chooses not
to allow sperm through the oviduct to fertilize the egg. I believe that when
the queen checks out the cells before laying in them, she receives some
stimuli which causes this action to occur.

Hope this is not taken as coming from a smart-alek. That is not the intent.
I am no expert on bees. I just wanted to show that this theory has been
looked at before. And that there are some problems with it.


Gordon Hayes
New Harmony, Indiana, USA

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http://www.evansville.net/~flashgh
http://www.sixfigureincome.com/?122477

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2000 9:12 AM
Subject: queens measuring cells


> Last week someone mentioned that it could be the size of the cell and
> pressure on the abdomen that causes the queen to fertilize or not
fertilize
> the egg...