>In message <[log in to unmask]>, Peter Borst
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>If workers moved eggs with any regularity then they would certainly
>find it easy enough to go to a hive a few feet away and get eggs.

The genetics to develop egg stealing would be hard to pass on. If a strain
of bees developed that was willing to sneak into another hive and fly off
with a fertile egg, its genetics would be lost as soon as the new queen was
hatched.

I think there is a lot of things we see that we do not understand. The cut
and dried, nice and simple answers don't always hold up. We know that at
times there can be more than one laying queen in a colony. There are cross
cast cases where the "queen" is more worker than proper queen. People have
seen queens moving outside the hive box.