>
> That is correct - seen it many times - but we were not talking about
> natural supersedure; we were talking about re-queening by introducing an
> unrelated virgin, either directly or by using a queen cell.


Interesting. So why is there a difference? (legitimate question) What would
cause the virgin/queen to fight under this scenario that doesn't exist
during a "natural" supersedure?

Maybe the laying queen and virgin can somehow sense they are not related,
which initiates a fight where in a mother/daughter supersedure that
wouldn't happen. I know workers can tell the degree of relatedness of an
egg or larvae, but can they tell the degree of relatedness to a newly
hatched adult? I've never seen newly hatched workers ever be rejected by a
colony, presumably because they hold no rival pheromones and can't be
detected by a colony as "foreign." So why wouldn't a newly hatched virgin
be any different? I've also had colonies rearing supersedure queens, to
which I've pinched and installed my own cell and the supersedure takes
place as planned. So I don't think the sensing of a non-daughter virgin
initiates a fight.

When a virgin just hatches, her mandibular gland hasn't fully developed. So
she isn't producing sufficient 9-ODA and 9-HDA (queen substance) to confuse
the colony into believing there are two queens. So that, in and of itself,
shouldn't cause a difference between a virgin fighting or a virgin
peacefully mating, laying, and eventually usurping the colony. The workers
shouldn't be able to adequately tell there is a problem, or force the two
to fight. Likewise, the laying queen shouldn't be able to tell the presence
of the virgin at the beginning, or initiate a fight, right?

Or is there something I'm missing?

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