Chris
>Peter, what has been your oldest queen?

5 years

>What evidence is there that longevity is hereditory and that her daughters 
>will end to live longer than those from a short-lived queen, thus producing 
>a box full of workers with less input?

Interesting question!  The literature says that A.m.m. produces long-lived 
workers and that is why they are able to gather a large crop with a smaller 
population.  This appears to be true based on the observations of many 
beekeepers, with small colonies that never expand the brood nest beyond 9 BS 
frames gathering at least as much honey as other races, or hybrids, on 
doubles with up to 22 frames of brood.

It is also true that A.m.m. is more inclined to supersede queens at the end 
of their useful life rather than swarm.  However, useful life for the 
beekeeper is not necessarily the same as longevity - an unclipped queen 
might swarm in her first year, but then live on in a feral colony for 
several years, we just do not know.

If we were to restrict your question to 'useful life to the beekeeper' (i.e. 
non-swarming) then we would presumably have to mark a fairly large number of 
workers from a fairly large number of colonies and in such a way that we 
could identify from which colonies they originated (given that they drift 
over several miles).  This would enable us to determine those colonies 
producing long-lived workers.  Then it would just be a matter of waiting for 
the queens to die!

Whether any work on this has been done I do not know - but I do know that it 
is beyond my resources!

Best wishes

Peter
52.194546N, -1.673618W 

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