Bill Truesdale writes:
>Just curious but are the wings longer or the bodies shorter? I note
>differences in body length all the time in my hives.
>
>And is there any reason that there would not be variability in bees,
>even of the same race or queen? Especially naturally mated or the
>conditions in the hive when the bees were developing. I would expect
>that you would see longer wings, longer bodies, etc..

One of the "eye-opening" principles I learned in one of my introductory
entomology courses in college (the professor was a bio-systematist)
was that just as no two human beings are exactly the same, no two
insects are exactly the same either.  Each one is an individual, differrent
in some way from all the rest.  There are ranges of variability for
numerous characteristics--number of hairs or setae, length of the setae,
patterns of the setae, length of the wings, width of the wings, etc. etc.
etc. and on and on for everything you can measure.  We as human
beings place a lot of value on individual variation in human beings but
usually forget that the same individual variation exists in the world of
insects (and the rest of nature) too.

When my professor found a new species or genus to describe, he
collected as many as he could obtain and measured and compared
them.  All the descriptions were in ranges of what he had measured.
Each individual differed from the rest in some way.  He then picked
one or two individuals of the group that most closely represented
the average characteristics as the holotype, and the remainder were
named allotypes (maybe there was another "type" too, but it's been
so long that I don't recall).  There is tremendous genetic variability and
plasticity, and it is expressed physically, physiologically and in
numerous other ways.  Honeybees are not exempt.

Layne Westover, College Station, Texas, U.S.A. (not flooding here)