Color you can see with your eye is also meaningless. Color, like the quoted haplotype simply tells you something about a very tiny hunk of the total DNA and nothing at all about the vast bulk of DNA. It would be perfectly reasonable for an It colored queen to head a colony that had classic Carny behavior or to have a black as your hat queen that headed a colony that had classic It behavior. Forget genetics for a moment. Rather, consider money. Say that I tell you that six different people each have a penny as part of their bank savings account. Now, one of those people might have $1 million in the bank and another might have $35 total in the bank. Knowing each has a penny tells you zero about anyone's total balance. Just like knowing a tiny hunk of DNA in the queen tells you zero about the total behavior of some colony of bees. Thanks Dick, I can't tell you how much I appreciate the well worded explanations. I myself struggle at times on how to explain things, your ability to put it to words is a great service. Charles *********************************************** 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