Here I am, replying to myself, again.  But I have a reason:

I decided to join the IBRA again, after a ~twenty year lapse, and to make some
use of their library.  With the credit cards, the web and email, what once were
slow ponderous processes for those of us in the colonies, may have become much
streamlined.  Seems to be so far, anyhow.

I have been bothered by these discussions we have had because so much has been
based on opinion and hearsay, not scientific experiment and/or observation.
Therefore, I dug deep into my pocket and decided to order a literatrure search.

A little while back, I received the results and have pondered them since.   As
far as I can see, I am free to share some of the references with you.  Although
the IBRA website for ordering material has a rather intimidating order form that
prohibits sharing photocopies ordered, I think that search results, or parts of
them, are not top secret.

> > ...I have several times removed a queen and, since I read that bees when
> > rearing emergency queens will use older larvae, I have gone back in
> > after 4 days and removed all capped cells.  Then no larvae over 24 hours
> > old has a chance.  I always find capped cells on the 4th day.  This
> > suggests that larvae older than 24 hours were used...

In the summary I received, there is reference to the following study:

>>>Punnett, E. N. and Winston, M. L. Events following queen removal in colonies
of European-derived honey bee races (Apis mellifera). Insectes Sociaux (1983) 30
(4) 376-383 [En, fr, B]

The timing of queen rearing and swarming are described after queens were removed
from colonies of European-derived honeybee races in Canada. Queen cell
construction began within one day of queen loss, and 91% of the queens which
emerged were eggs at the time of queens loss. Queen cells Were evenly
distributed over the comb face, and 4% of the brood reared as queens were moved
from worker cells to queen cups... (truncated for brevity)<<<

"[En, fr, B] " Means English, French, and 'B" means yes, I can order a copy of
the article!  Do you think I should?

Interestingly enough, one of the authors of the above study also wrote this:

>>>Winston, M. Research review. British Columbia Honey Producers' Association
Newsletter (1983) (No. 3) 5 [En, B]

This short note lists reasons against requeening colonies by killing the queen
and letting them rear new queens. It also reports evidence that, after a queen
was removed, workers could and did move brood from worker cells to queen cups,
where queens developed. E. Crane.

Dept. Biological Sci., Simon Fraser Univ., Burnaby, BC, Canada.<<<

And -- just to keep things interesting -- here's another one for you that might
seem to conflict with the the first, a bit, at least -- as far as I can see,
anyhow:

>>>Soczek, Z. Investigation of methods for obtaining valuable honeybee queens
from emergency queen cells. [Poszukiwanie sposobu uzyskiwania wartosciowych
matek pszczelich z matecznikow ratunkowych.]. Pszczelnicze Zeszyty Naukowe
(1971) 15 (1/2) 53-59 [Pl, ru\en, B] Zaklad Pszczelnictwa, Skierniewice, Poland.

It was observed that, under natural conditions, workers which had become
queenless chose cells containing larvae up to 162 h old at the moment of
queenlessness, and built these into emergency queen cells during the next 4
days. Similar building was done on cells containing larvae 54-78 h old if the
size of these cells was increased by means of a cell-moulding stick. This is the
basis of a simple method of rearing queens.P. Walker.<<<

I gather the 162H is hours from laying and would be about a 3.75 day old larva.

Where do you order searches and reprints, you are probably wondering?

http://www.cf.ac.uk/ibra/photo-fm.shtml

allen

...Thinking maybe we can increase the 'INFORMED' content of the list for
"Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology"