The lavish feeding of larvae is noted in this discussion:

> observations from commercial queen-rearing (Laidlaw, 1979): immature queens are normally fed excess royal jelly (which remains uneaten in the cell) ... This indicates that it may be difficult for a single patriline of honey bees to cause their full-sister queen larvae to have greater survival by differential feeding, because a great deal of indiscriminate and excess feeding goes on, which would make discriminatory feeding ineffectual, particularly in the natural situation with many partrilines. However, if food for queen-rearing is available in excess, discriminatory feeding may have no overall biasing effect, particularly if recognition errors are frequent.

Which leads to the next question, regarding the production of excessive numbers of queens:

> In swarm-founding species with a distinct queen caste, such as honey bees (Apis), stingless bees (Meliponinae), army ants (e.g., Eciton), and some polybiine wasps (Jeanne, 1980), colonies typically produce excess queens before fissioning (Wilson 1971). Only one queen need survive (or a few if several swarms are produced) ...

Francis L. W. Ratnieks and Hudson Kern Reeve
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
J. evol. Biol. 4: 93-115 (1991)

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