> From: Jerry J Bromenshenk <[log in to unmask]> > Subject: Re: egg laying after swarming > > Jerry wrote: > > This may not be a laying worker. Contrary to popular notion, we find > that queens in small colonies often lay 2 or more eggs in a cell. > Not quite as scattered as a laying worker, but otherwise much the > same. After the new brood emerges, this stops. I base this > observation on several hundred units closely monitored for our > research over a 20 year period. This is an extremely interesting piece of information. Some recent research has shown that the laying worker activity seen in cape bees, where workers lay eggs that develop innto workers is not restricted to capensis, but can be founnd in other bees such as scutellata as well. (apparently in mozambique or tanzania or some such place it was found that laying workers with a frequency of 1 in a 1000 could lay worker eggs) In the case of our bees, when one gets laying workers in a swarm it is usually from a hive which has requeened. Here, once a queen has died and workers have commenced queen rearinng they begin to lay eggss as well. (hence one can have a strong hive without a queen but with queen cells being produced right up until when a queen hatches. What I have noticed however is that this laying worker activity (detected by badly placed eggs in largenumbers) decreases rapidly after the queen beings laying. Up until this point it continues. (one can tell laying cape workers by looking in worker combs - if it is a laying worker laying the eggs they lie flat and at all angles often up to ten in a cell - if it is a queen all eggs face the same way and point out of the cell at a slight angle) Apparently in EHB's however worker policing stops all (supposedly) diploid eggs. > Question: Does the queen finally figure it out? or Does the queen Or does something in queen pheremone make the bees more deceitful? > continue to put too many eggs in some of the cells, and the workers > remove the extras? As the colony grows in size, it has more > workers, and more "hands" to do miscellaneous chores. > Another case of my favorite notion: The bees didn't read the books. But I certainly wish I could read the way they do!! Then would not have to worry about AATGGC ETC!! Keep well Garth Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries Grahamstown Apis mellifera capensis Eastern Cape Prov. South Africa Time = Honey Standard Disclaimer applies to this post.