>
>In an emergency (which over the millenia could be of any source from
>volcanoes to beekeepers) the soundest strategy for the bees would be to
>get themselves a queen as quickly as possible - if she were to turn out
>not very good they could always supercede her at their leisure.
>The fastest way to a functioning queen must be to use the oldest grub
>which will yield a working queen - maybe this is the reason for starting
>with ageing grubs. Anyone got any idea of the oldest grub that will
>produce a functioning queen?
>
I attended a workshop at EAS about queen cell biology. While there still
seems to be some debate about the quality of a queen based on the age of
the larvae selected, there seems to be an even bigger consideration
regarding the quality of the resulting queen. The amount of royal jelly
that is placed into the cell before it is capped may be a very good
indicator of how good a queen that hatched.

Queen cells that were produced for swarming or supercedure had so much
royal jelly in them that after the queen emerged, a good deal of dry
residue was still in the bottom of the cell. Cells from emergency queens
often have all of the jelly consumed by the larvae.

I wonder if this could put the issue of queen quality in a different light.
The emergency queens have run out of food in the capped cell. The other
queens had all they needed, and then some. Could this be a result of the
bees having a longer period to fill the cell before capping? Could a few
hours time give the bees enough time to add enough jelly to end up with a
good queen? If so the difference between a workable emergency queen and a
poor one could be the result of small differences in the way the bees have
fed the larvae.

I also wonder if bees tend to chose brood of full sisters for the new
queen? If so this could account for the choice of older larvae when eggs
are available. The process of natural selection is going to give a lot of
favor to a "selfish" gene if it raises the chances of that trait being
passed along. Having your full sister become the next egg layer would pass
on the gene, and promote its selection.