Hi All,
 
I wonder whether there are one or several mechanisms to balling. We are
all familiar with balling the Queen, but I understand that a similar
thing occurs when bees fight off Hornets as I'm told that the bees'
stings are unable to penetrate the Hornets 'armour', so they use
suffocation by balling as their defence.  I think balling of the Queen
mostly occurs when the bees are distressed, e.g., by us as intruders,
so do they just get confused or panicked, or is there more to it than
that?
 
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I think if a laying worker was to be killed it would only require her to
be stung by the other workers. I suspect that they just don't really
understand the problem they have, although they certainly know they have
a problem. Solitary bees don't have a Queen; social bees evolved from
them; maybe they still 'remember' their ancestory?  'Genetic memory' is
extraordinarily powerful!
 
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A caveat to Kerry Clark's statement on laying workers (I hope he'll
forgive me). Sometimes with strong young Queens in small colonies, like
afterswarms/casts, the Queen gets ahead of the available empty cells
so she goes round again and you then get multiple eggs per cell.
Note Kerry's qualifier of eggs laid _badly_ up the sides of the cells and
so on -- workers don't easily reach the bottom of the cell.
 
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Incidently, I made a statement a few days ago about Mellifera not
recognising Varroa as a threat. I guess I worded that poorly because
it's subjective, not objective. I think I should say they *appear* to
not recognise....  Does anyone have any other view?