> Studies in early 20c have shown this... I referenced only a small portion of a study which contained a graph of the number of eggs laid in cells of various temperatures... They came to the conclusion that 'laying by the queen in early brood rearing is controlled by the temperature gradient', as the chart above seems to suggest...

Very interesting.  I'd love to see the study.  

It stands to reason that a queen will preferentially lay in cells in a certain range of temperatures and demure from laying in cells too hot or too cold.  Of course there are many other factors which might relate to cell temperature, which I assume were controlled by maintaining the test comb free of other bees and varying the temp so they could not be providing cues?

Outside of controlled experiments, do bees freshly polish cells only at certain temps?  Does the temp of a set of cells indicate something about the level of occupation by the cluster and the likelihood of copntinued occupation?

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