We investigate Steel’s conjecture in ‘The Core Model Iterability Problem’ [10], that if
$\mathcal {W}$ and
$\mathcal {R}$ are
$\Omega +1$-iterable,
$1$-small weasels, then
$\mathcal {W}\leq ^{*}\mathcal {R}$ iff there is a club
$C\subset \Omega $ such that for all
$\alpha \in C$, if
$\alpha $ is regular, then
$\alpha ^{+\mathcal {W}}\leq \alpha ^{+\mathcal {R}}$. We will show that the conjecture fails, assuming that there is an iterable premouse M which models KP and which has a
-Woodin cardinal. On the other hand, we show that assuming there is no transitive model of KP with a Woodin cardinal the conjecture holds. In the course of this we will also show that if M is a premouse which models KP with a largest, regular, uncountable cardinal
$\delta $, and
$\mathbb {P} \in M$ is a forcing poset such that
$M\models "\mathbb {P}\text { has the }\delta \text {-c.c.}"$, and
$g\subset \mathbb {P}$ is M-generic, then
$M[g]\models \text {KP}$. Additionally, we study the preservation of admissibility under iteration maps. At last, we will prove a fact about the closure of the set of ordinals at which a weasel has the S-hull property. This answers another question implicit in remarks in [10].