> Whereas, queen breeders typically use day old or older larvae, all pulled from combs of larvae that were destined to be rank and file workers.

> That's also a strong statement! 

Not sure what you object to in this statement, as it appears to me to be a description of the standard practice. Breeder queens lay normal worker eggs, the day old larvae are transferred into artificial cell cups. They have already passed many hours being fed as workers, whereas an egg destined to be a queen is fed as such from the moment it hatches. I realize we are splitting hairs here, but there is a spectrum of quality ranging from a perfect queen to workers with queen like characters. 

But seriously, the details I offered were examples of open questions. My point is that queen rearing practices seem to be stuck in the 19th century. Juliana Rangel, Dave Tarpy, and others are trying to scrutinize these practices with the aims of finding out causes of premature supersedure and/or shortened lifespan, finding weak points in queen rearing practices, and moving toward improvements. I don't think it's in dispute that queen rearing practices today are aimed primarily at high volume.

PLB 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html