The study investigates whether worker policing via the selective removal of worker-laid male eggs occurs in normal honey bee colonies with a queen. Queenright honey bee colonies were set up with the queen below a queen excluder. Frames of worker brood and drone comb were placed above the queen excluder. Daily inspections of the drone frames revealed the presence of a few eggs, presumably laid by workers, at a rate of 1 egg per 16000 drone cells. 85% of these eggs were removed within 1 day and only 2% hatched. Dissections of workers revealed that about 1 worker in 10000 had a fully developed egg in her body. These data show that worker egg-laying and worker policing are both normal, though rare, in queenright honey bee colonies, and provide further confirmation of the worker policing hypothesis. honey bee workers discriminate between queen-laid and worker-laid male eggs, preferentially eating the latter.
Ratnieks and Visscher (1989) studied egg discrimination using worker-laid male eggs obtained from queenless colonies with laying workers, which were then transferred into queenright discriminator colonies using forceps. The aim of the present study was to look for worker egg-laying and worker policing, via the removal of worker-laid eggs, within queenright honey bee colonies without transferring eggs from queenless colonies. The importance of this is to determine whether worker policing is a normal, although rarely observed, part of colony life in honey bees, or an artefact of the technique used by Ratnieks and Visscher (1989). In addition, the study determines the proportion of workers with developed ovaries in normal queenright colonies. 1990trials A1 D+