And, how could a queen know she did not have sperm available to fertilize an egg? Queens that run out of sperm do not lay only in drone cells as far as I know. I do know you can easily crush the abdomen on a queen when you pinch her. The spermathca is a small round ball that is easily found. If its clear, she has no sperm, cloudy and she still had some. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html