This conversation made me recall some earlier reading, and I'd offer this paper as a point of interest. In addition to a drone laying queen and a queenless colony with laying workers, there's a third drone laying worker identified in this study as an "anarchist" bee. In a colony with anarchist bees, which are extremely rare according to the authors, the laying workers assume the dual role of both normal worker and drone layer without the characteristics of becoming a false queen.
Oldroyd, B. P., L. Hailing, and T. E. Rinderer. "Development and behaviour of anarchistic honeybees." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 266.1431 (1999): 1875-1878.
***********************************************
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