Aaron, of course, is right and I stand humbly corrected. :)  It was supposed be OVARIOLES not ovaries.  I am glad this was picked up.

I have another question on this topic: is the number of ovarioles what determines the ultimate size of the queen or the age of the larva that results in the bigger queen?

I ask this because I've heard/read that colonies headed smaller queens sometimes outproduce other colonies.  Mating is the other side of the coin but this may be due to better genetics allowing potentially fewer - since from a smaller queen - harder working workers outshine their peers.

Waldemar
Long Island, NY

>>All queens have 2 ovaries.  Waldemar's statement should read, "an indicator of how many OVARIOLES would become functional."

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