Randy replied rather definitively that intercaste queens will not be big ol 
fat queens.

I have been playing with the walk away split concept and this is what I have 
seen...looking through a dozen  or two cells from about 10 hives:

-Most of the pupae seem to be very nicely developed........my means of 
judgement is by comparing to a normal grown worker(eyeball).. they are some 
20% 30 % longer than grown workers and nice and fat
The pupae had wing buds just forming at this time. There is almost no 
question these will produce fat queens. I will post if I find otherwise in a 
few days.

- In every instance I checked I found leftover royal jelly-a good sign.

-We are now in the midst of a real light honey flow.


Anyhow, this is encouraging and seems to support Allen and Jerrys and others 
observations that walk away splits can produce really good queens under the 
right conditions..what you would hope for is is that this also indicates 
that they are "a good distance" from being intercaste..in other words larvae 
chosen from the appropriate age. This might be a corollary of Randys 
statement.

My skepticism of growing good queens from "walk away splits has lessened 
considerably..

This is only one observation so I am not stating it as fact...I am however 
encouraged.

Thanks for the input from all.

John Horton 

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