Something Fairly Obvious escaped me for some time and I have intended to write
about it.  So much so, in fact, that I thought that I had already written, and
just now wasted some precious time searching back articles for my note.  Guess I
did not write it.  For this I apologize.

I refer you to page 19 in your 'Contemporary Queen Rearing' text.  In the second
column, under 'Queens', the development of an egg into a queen bee is shown in
table form.

Let's start at the top with an egg being laid at the beginning of the first day.
Nothing much appears to happen until the end of the third day, at which time the
egg hatches -- according to my book.

Let's reset out clock here and call this the first day for the larva.  One full
day after hatching (twenty-four hours) we see the label '1st moult'.  And again
after another twenty-four hours, we see '2nd moult'.  And at the end of the
third day, we see '3rd moult'.

BUT at the end of the fourth day, we see '4th moult (Sealing)'.  To me this
seems to indicate that the cell is sealed when the larva is four days old.

Now, here's the puzzler.  It has been repeated here on BEE-L time and again,
that if a hive is dequeened and, then -- four days later -- sealed cells are
found, that they must perforce be from old larvae chosen by the bees.

I don't get it.

If

1.) a larva is routinely sealed four days after hatching, and

2.) larvae up to 36 hours old are routinely used in grafting and considered
acceptable,

How does it follow that sealed cells found after four days necessarily contain
inferior queens?

allen
http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/