Hi Peter

 > Sounds logical, but that situation is not the same as 'normal' laying
 > workers.

That is exactly the point, we were talking about anarchistic bees being 
the likely cause an occurrence of drone brood in worker cells above a 
sound excluder, rather than just laying workers, then the thread title 
got changed to 'Drones above the excluder' which brought in all sorts of 
other aspects.

I think the confusion arises due to the fact that anarchistic bees are 
also laying workers, but not all laying workers are anarchistic.

There is also confusion because some beekeepers do not recognise the 
difference between the two behaviours.

Anarchistic behaviour exists normally only at very low levels and so is 
hard to detect. Odd colonies are found that exhibit the behaviour more 
strongly, such colonies are highly prized and are studied extensively, 
because the studying is easier, that is not to say that the behaviour 
observed in these rare, but well studied colonies, is necessarily 
exactly the same as the effect when it is exhibited at more normal very 
low levels.

Although the levels of this behaviour are low (say one in 10,000 bees), 
I reckon that the distribution of the behaviour is quite wide (maybe one 
hive in about twenty).

These sorts of numbers would not give rise to the effect being noticed 
very much.

Before you can estimate the effect on diversity of these extra drones, 
you also need to take into account the intensity of worker policing 
involved and the possibility of thelytoky, which is also very rare (2 or 
3 orders of magnitude lower than anarchy).

However small the effect is, it is always in the bees favour from a 
'survivability' point of view.


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
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