Rnady Oliver writes: “It is therefore to the indirect benefit of any 
subfamily of sisters to police all eggs laid in the brood combs to ensure 
that no subfamily plays unfairly by having workers lay eggs.”

   Randy, I agree it would seem to make little sense for bees to have 
developed this important and elaborate system of maintaining genetic 
diversity while at the same time tending to defeat it by establishing 
competitive sisterhoods within the hive.  But I’m wondering what the 
chances of worker lain drones ever passing on their genes are.  I’ve always 
heard that these are considerably less vigorous than queen laid drones.
   There is one way that the nepotism you refer to would perhaps make some 
sense, and it may have already been pointed out by Peter or someone else.  
Presumably the main way preferential selection of eggs of a sisterhood by 
that sisterhood would show up is in the selection of eggs for queen cells.  
If even a small tendency to do this existed, then the sisterhood that 
happened to have a higher survival rate than that of the others would stand 
an even better chance of selecting eggs of their own genetic likeness.  
This could theoretically have the potential of conveying a survival benefit 
to the colony.  However if this were the case, or I should say if this had 
ever been the case, it is hard to see how it would not have become a fairly 
obvious mechanism in the course of honeybee evolution.  Those traits that 
convey even a slight advantage, once introduced, tend to become the 
established modus operandi fairly quickly and prominently.  That this is 
not apparently the case could be explained by there not being an ability to 
distinguish between genetic alternatives in eggs, and/or by there not 
being, often enough, a significant difference between the survival rates of 
half sisters within a colony.  My money would be on the former.  It could 
also be, as you say, that the benefits of maintaining genetic diversity 
within the colony outweigh any possible benefit derived from selecting for 
the stronger of the sisterhoods within a colony thus tending to suppress 
any tendency for the latter mechanism to become established.  
   The benefits of diversity are fairly obvious and the whole reproductive 
system seems geared toward this, whereas the mechanism of prejudicial 
selection of eggs according to genetic makeup is hardly apparent let alone 
obvious.  Even the benefits of such a mechanism are not obvious.   

Steve Noble

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