In message <[log in to unmask]>, Allen Dick <[log in to unmask]> writes >My >understanding has always been that a retinue -- when it is observed, which >often >it is not -- is made up simply of bees that are nearby when the queen is >working, and not bees that make a career of following and serving the queen. >Have I been missing something? I doubt very much. Watching bees in an observation hive suggests to me that the queen is largely ignored and the queen even ignores bees on the frame except to push them out of the way to get to a cell. When she stops laying, the bees immediately next to her turn to form the ring we associate with grooming and feeding. After a few seconds of this she gets on with her job and they get on with theirs. I have never seen bees following her. They seem like 2 separate operations until some signal must pass to initiate the circle. After a few such cycles, I have seen the queen disappear into a corner and be surrounded by a cluster for quite a lot longer - presumably to incubate her as well - and presumably a different signal passes to make this happen. Fascinating. I teach (until someone tells me otherwise) that as the workers age, new propensities arise as glands mature and later atrophy so new tasks are possible. The worker wanders around and when a task needs to be done that she can do, she will do it; like cleaning cells within seconds of hatching or grooming or feeding queens and each other. I always ask novices watching a frame and children (or adults) looking into an observation hive to follow a newly hatched bee to see what it does. People are fascinated - as I always am - the same with the queen. I teach that bees movement has a high random component (like the queen laying), but the tasks put certain requirements on the movements - such as eating pollen and honey to make brood food and to get back into the brood area to keep it warm following the larval pheromones and so on. So, only bees within a narrow age range are suitable for attending the queen to *feed* her - but if she's not laying, she won't need much feed. I like the anthropocentric idea of morale though. Surely they travel better with *any* worker bees and the worker bees respond well to travelling with queens. The beauty of random movement plus a few instincts as parameters (limits and requirements) is that with thousands of bees and good communications you get an entity of a sort a bit like a multi-celled animal with mobile cells. Very beautiful to observe with informed but naive wonder. By the way, to change the subject completely, has anyone come across bees that nip your fingers, perhaps as a precursor to stinging? Is this tendency associated with grooming mites? One of my colleagues reports it regularly and I am just starting to notice it. -- James Kilty