> We don't know if the hive bees replace the queen, or she sacrifices
> herself.


I'm not certain I understand a scenario where the queen *doesn't *sacrifice
herself in supersedure. The queen needs to lay the egg in the queen cup.
Whether coerced, or not, she must make the election to sacrifice herself.

Honey Bee Biology by Caron and Connor states:

"When a queen receives too little queen substance from her attendant
workers, she responds by laying fertilized eggs in a few queen cups. She
does this over several days. Workers in no way force her to do this, nor do
they apparently transfer fertilized eggs she has produced into the empty
queen cups. The queen herself must initiate the behavior." pg. 117

The only other conceivable situation where the queen doesn't sacrifice
herself in supersedure would be where workers move fertilized eggs, or day
old larvae, from worker cells to queen cups. There has been several threads
on this topic, but in the end I have heard several say the bees do this,
several say the bees don't do this, but have yet to find a study where it
proves bees *regularly* do this.

2) we don't know if the queen "decides" to fertilize eggs or if it's a
> reflex.


I've read it repeatedly that a queen will measure the size of a cell before
laying in it. If it's too large, she lays an unfertilized egg. I remember
Dr. Tarpy telling me about a study that was done where they put small
"handcuffs" on the queens back legs, so they couldn't fully expand beyond
the size of an average worker cell, and had the queen lay eggs in worker
and drone cells. All of the larvae turned out fertilized. Thus the queen
determines when to fertilize an egg based on the size of the cell she lays
in, as measured when she's laying based on the positioning of her legs.
Maybe you can find the study Pete.

I'm not sure if anyone can ever prove whether this is a decision, a reflex,
or something inbetween, but it's as close to a decision as I can
contemplate.

But overall, yes I agree. Very little is known about supersedure.

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