In the Cape Bee (Apis mellifera capensis), queen replacement based on the eggs of laying workers appears to be rare. Prof. H. R. Hepburn writes about in his book "Honeybees of Africa"(1998). He studied 30 *unmanaged* colonies of Cape bees over a period of 4 years. In these colonies he found normal supersedure , from a queen's egg, in 25 cases. In 11 cases, supersedure was begun, only to be given up and the old queen was allowed to continue. Protracted polygyny (more than one queen) occurred in 5 cases with 1 of these having 3 queens for several months. In only 4 cases (7%) was a queen raised from a worker egg. And 3 of these colonies later absconded (abandoned the hive). Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>