"Interesting suggestion, but wouldn't that imply that multiple individuals had multiple hives with highly inbred queens? "

Highly inbred seems to me a pretty big overstatement of the degree of inbreeding needed to see this problem. Does it take all that much inbreeding in a small apiary to lead to some diploid drones?

Hi all
I apologize for the use of the phrase " highly inbred queens" without any attempt to define it. On the other hand, Occam's razor would seem to rule out the conjecture that a widespread phenomenon would be related to inbreeding. As to how much inbreeding would " lead to some diploid drones" -- what do you think? 

PLB

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