>Having culled literally thousands of them and seen multiple aged queens on so many occasions,  I tend to think Dave's got a really good observation.  I am quite sure both may occur.


In this study Fell and Morse found that a high percentage of emergency queens were from cells drawn over two-day old larvae.  According to Haydak the larvae used for emergency queens are switched to royal jelly when selected, so the feeding part, as Tarpy points out in the video, can mean that survival at all costs results in queens of somewhat lesser quality. 



>The ages of the worker larvae chosen to be reared as queens were calculated for 170 emergency cells <

>The larvae chosen to be reared as queens were generally under 3 days 
of age (90 %) with the majority-2 days or less in age (65 % of the total).
The construction of queen cells over larvae 4 days of age or from eggs
occurred only rarely (10 % and 0.8 % respectively). The majority of virgin
queens which emerged in the queenless colonies were reared from larvae
3 days or less in age (93.8 %). Queens reared from larvae over 48 hours
(43.7 % in this study) tend to be smaller than queens reared from younger
larvae, but no significant differences in ovariole number have been observed for queens reared from larvae 12-72 hours in age (ECKERT, 1934 ; WEISS, 1971). <

EMERGENCY QUEEN CELL PRODUCTION IN THE HONEY BEE COLONY
R.D. FELL (1) and R.A. MORSE  1984

Bill Hesbach
Cheshire CT



 

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