>
> >"Except for workers having been foragers for many days, our results also
> suggest that the previous life histories of workers do not constrain them
> from becoming winter bees as long as they get ample food and time to build
> up their protein reserves before wintering."
>

Ghislain, this early conclusion has not been supported by subsequent
research.  I recently asked Dr Amdam about it, and she has no data to
support that this indeed takes place.  Mattila's results speak otherwise.

>
> "... This demonstrates the importance of pollen in the life of bees and
> also the fact that emerging bees which had lived for an extended period of
> time on pure carbohydrate diet can increase their weight and the nitrogen
> content to normal levels and can rear brood normally.
>

Nearly "normally":  they  do not recover the ability to produce jelly as
well as normal nurse bees.

Fluri's work demonstrated the importance of JH, but Amdam and Page's
subsequent "double repressor hypothesis" further elaborates that Vg
represses JH.

>Not until late March at the earliest is there significant pollen inflow.
Some other signal must control the raising of long and short lived bees.

Pete, I don't follow you.  Why do you think that there must be some other
signal?

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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