>So, I am not so sure that "we already know they make deliberate choices about which worker eggs to raise as queens." >

My apologies for not posting the link...I am traveling right now and cannot search my emails for that paper, but below is one like it. 

In the paper recently published and also in this one, the researchers found that queen larvae tend strongly to come from patrilines that are rare in the colony population.

This overturns what I was taught as a newbee, that supersisters probably successfully promote supersister eggs to become queen larvae.

While it does not prove that workers can preselect eggs to become queens based on something they sense that promises the egg chosen will make a better queen than the ones passed over, it does suggest that workers sense things about eggs we do not.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7610474_Rare_royal_families_in_honeybees_Apis_mellifera

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