OK, I finally reviewed three studies on the moving of eggs or larvae by
workers into queen cells.

As pointed out by Butler (1957), after having observed  eggs showing up in
queen cups absent access by a queen, that  "It seems to be generally
believed that the eggs found in [supersedure] queen cell cups have been
placed therein by the old queen herself, but in the case of supersedure
this belief appears to be based more on supposition than upon observation."

Winston (1979) found that this apparent transfer of eggs or young larvae
occurred in 47% of the emergency cells in dequeened Africanized bees.
Punnet and Winston (1983) found this to occur in only 4% of European
cells.  Virtually no larvae older than 1 day of age were reared to maturity.

Winston and Punnet also caution against making walkaway splits, due to the
high rate of brood mortality, the extended queenless period, and the
frequency of afterswarming.  They also observed that swarm issuance, for
afterswarms and emergency queen rearing,  typically took place 1-4 days
after the virgin(s) emerged.

I  recently spoke with Dr. Winston on this subject; he felt that it
certainly calls for more research, with which I am in complete agreement!

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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