Somewhere a while back I remember reading somewhere about laying workers in *queenright* colonies. This topic has interested me once again, as I have been seeing some substantial patches of drone brood here and there in some honey supers as I have been harvesting honey. Now granted, I'm not using queen excluders, BUT these patches of drone brood are in supers near the top of the stack, with full honey supers below them. Which means her highness would have to cross a great deal of honey to find the drone comb to lay in. I wonder if the workers are up to this mischief. I recall seeing drone brood like this (always late summer/early fall) in past seasons, when excluders were used, as well. I would become alarmed that the queen had been trapped *above* the excluder due to some mistake on my part. Yet, I would find her below with a normal happy brood nest. The question here is, do others see this late in the season, and does anyone have info about laying workers existing and rearing drone brood in a normal queenright hive? Thanks for any comments -J