> Beo Cooper marked 100 workers in summer and found some of them still alive after several months and he used this to argue that AMM produces longer lived workers than other races

Other studies have shown bees alive for hundreds of days. However, this does not imply that it is useful to the colony to have bees live for hundreds of days. Especially if the extremely long lived bees are still alive because the haven't been working at anything.

For example, according to Breed, Robinson and Page:
> Studies of intracolonial activity have revealed that many bees spend large proportions of their lives in apparent inactivity (Lindauer 1961).

They speculate that the bees are held "in reserve":
> A large number of bees primed for soldiering would give the appearance of inactivity in the absence of a colony disturbance. In fact, these bees may be playing a very important role as a defensive reserve that can be immediately mobilized at the time of a disturbance.

Breed, Michael D., Gene E. Robinson, and Robert E. Page Jr. 
"Division of labor during honey bee colony defense." 
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 27.6 (1990): 395-401.

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