One of the academics, I do not recall which one, did an experiment where he held a queen captive until she started to lay.  She was a drone layer of course.  He then took some of her drone sons and did II on the queen using the son's sperm.  She then laid fertilized eggs.  This is the only way a queen can be mated to her sons.  This really hampers breeding experiments as mother to son matings in many other species  are a common way to rapidly concentrate desired traits while avoiding too close inbreeding.  Generally one generation of mother to son inbreeding is fine and does not cause noticeable inbreeding suppression.  

So, it would appear there is not a time limit where the spermatheca is no longer able to accept and store sperm.  However, there clearly is a time limit past which the queen simply starts to lay and will no longer go on mating flights.  I am sure that time limit varies from queen to queen.  So looking for some absolute number of days is likely the wrong answer.  Still the data would indicate that sometime after about three weeks post emergence for a mating flight is getting to the upper limit.  The only two queens I have ever had that went past 30 days post emergence before they started to lay were both drone layers.  They laid around 35 or 40 days post emergence.

Dick

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