Here is a characteristic I have not read about so I wonder if
"everyone" knows about it.  I removed a colony of bees and all their
comb from a wall and, as usual, went off and left about a quart of
bees remaining.  I later discovered that there was not a queen among
the ones I had removed.  A month later I went back and discovered
that about a pint of bees had made two small pieces of new comb about
6 inches long.  (This is Guam where the daily temperature range is
from 87 to 75 degrees F.)  I removed it into a hive body as before
and noticed one had some capped brood so presumed that the original
queen had remained with them.  By now I had learned how to recover
all the bees.  (I describe this at
<http://pub5.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=411580919>.)  But
the next day when I went through this small "colony", I convinced
myself there was no queen with them.  Then I noticed that all the
sealed brood cells were drone "bullet" cells.  Presumably they were
from eggs laid by laying workers.  (I can't see the eggs themselves
without a magnifying glass.)  I have read about laying workers, of
course, although I have never seen any so far as I know.  But I
didn't realize that the laying urge was strong enough to cause them
to build new comb to receive the eggs.   Dan

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