"For sure that female is not a clone of the mother as the egg goes thru
cross overs before the cell divisions that form the egg."

Here is how cross overs work.  During meiosis parts of each chromosome are swapped between matching pairs of chromosomes.  Lets make this simple and say a bee only has one pair of chromosomes.  So, we can call one chromosome in the queen A and the other B.  Now, in the queen the genes on the A chromosome could be labeled A1-A2-A3-A4-A5-etc where 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 represent individual genes.  Likewise in the queen the B chromosome would be B1-B2- etc.  A1 and B1 may well be different alleles.  Or they may be the same.  But, after cross overs happen you no longer have chromosome A or B.  Rather you still have two chromosomes but the alleles might be A1-B2-B3-A4-B5 on one chromosome and B1-A2-A3-B4-A5 on the other chromosome.  Or it can even get more messy where one is A1-B2-B3-A4-B5 but the other is A1-A2-B3-B4-A5.  All of these chromosomes that have crossed over differ from any of the chromosomes in the queen, thus the offspring is not a clone of the queen.

I can tell you from experience teaching genetics that cross overs are about the most difficult topic in genetics for beginners to understand.  For some reason the idea is simply very hard for many to grasp.  Yet, crossovers are an absolutely needed happening to allow genes on a chromosome to recombine in different combinations.  Some recombinations can result in superior performance.  Most are neutral.  Every single chromosome recombines at least once during meiosis.  Most cross over more than once. The frequency is under genetic control so can vary from individual to individual.  Honey bees are known to exhibit a very high rate of cross overs.

Dick

HL Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. "

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