Rick Green asks, "why a queenless hive makes laying workers who in turn produce drones? It would seem that these drones came from failed genetics, the hive died, so why would nature chance spreading these genes rather than creating none at all?" I doubt highly from a genetics point of view, that the genes being passed on from a laying worker hive include a propensity for the queen to fail. I just can't imagine that such a combination of chromosomes exists, and if it did it would have fallen out of the gene pool long ago. It's a far stretch to assume a queenless hive represents "failed genetics". Laying worker hives that produce only drones is a way to ensure that the genetic material from that hive remains in the gene pool, rather than weeding it out. In a natural environment, it is unlikely that a hive will become queenless. Failing queens are superceded. It's possible that a virgin queen could meet an untimely demise on her nuptual flight(s), but such a situation is not a genetic flaw. The resulting laying worker hive may indeed have a very good compliment of genetic material and the ability to keep the genetic material in the pool after the queen's demise may be viewed by some as nothing short of miraculous! > Unless, having lived and failed is considered genetically better than not having > lived at all. Genetics make no considerations or judgements. Aaron Morris - Thinking there's some things you can chalk up to genetics, there's some things you can't.