In article <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask] writes
>I have found, too often for it to be just a casual occurence, that the new
>queen will not come into lay (or maybe she does and her eggs are eaten) until
>all her sisters have emerged.
>
>Chris

This is actually an erroneous assumption commonly made, and often
repeated as gospel, when it is really just a natural coincidence between
the time intervals involved in raising a new queen totalling a similar
amount of time as it takes for the worker brood to mature and hatch.

You can prove it wrong by shortcircuiting the process using near
hatching cells in a freshly made split with brood in all stages. (We do
this all the time.)  Except in the poorest of conditions when mating is
delayed you will find the new queen mated and laying long before the
previous queens brood has all hatched. Queen breeders just re-cell their
nucs immediately they harvest a queen from them, and two weeks later
(sometimes less) they get another laying queen, a full week before the
previous queens brood has hatched.
--
Murray McGregor

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