Diffrent bees in the same hive?

[RangerBrad]

This spring I caught a wild swarm and gave it to a friend who put them in a new hive box. He now says that he has 2 kinds of bees in that hive. They are the same size but some are a dark black while others are light colored (Appx. half and half) What caused this? Ifigured that they should all be the same as they are all sisters. What say yal to this? Thank's, Brad

[Irwin]

It's the drones that the Queen mated with. In my hive's I've got all kinds of bee's dark light small and big.

[Michael Bush]

As Irwin said, a queen mates with many drones, so the offspring vary a lot from one queen.

[L Daxon]

Variations in the coloring of bees in the same hive is a sign of a well mated queen.  On her mating flight a queen can mate with a dozen or more drones (and not just drones from her hive).  The more she mates with, the greater the potential variety/diversity of the genetic stock.  I bet if you friend looks closely he will see more than two types of coloration.  And they are not all sisters; consider many of them to be half-sisters and the variety that implies.

[AllenF]

It is good to have gene variation in the hive. 

[FRAMEshift]

It is good to have gene variation in the hive.  

It is indeed, and for more reasons than I understood.... until recently.  Wisdom of the Hive by Thomas Seeley makes an interesting calculation.  The workers are related to the drone eggs laid by the queen with .25 of the genes in common .  Workers are related to the drone eggs laid by other workers with an average of common genes calculated by the formula .125+.25/n where n is the number of drones the queen mated with.  If the queen mated with only one drone, it would be to the evolutionary advantage of workers to lay eggs and allow eggs laid by other workers to survive.  If the queen mated with 2 drones, it would be equally advantageous to have drones laid by the queen or other workers.  But when the queen mates with more than 2 drones, it is to the advantage of workers to eat the drone eggs laid by other workers.... and that is exactly what they do.  

Studies of drone egg laying show that 10% of the drone eggs are laid by workers but they are eaten by other workers withing 8 hours.  Drone eggs laid by the queen are left relatively unscathed and are generally the only eggs to survive.  Viva la diversity!

[tecumseh]

a RangerBrad snip...
They are the same size but some are a dark black while others are light colored (Appx. half and half)

tecumseh:
two things could be going on here.  1) as reported by other multiple mated queens will produce a variation in the female population (not so in the drone population) and 2) the splitting of the egg prior to fertilization can result in variation in color of a queen's offspring (you can see this quite plainly in some of the AI Cordovan queens I have here).