But we're drifting into a different conversation. What could cause the
variation in egg weight, and could you explain or expand in this bit please?
> "...but in addition to egg size by genetic differences within a colony
assumed to be linked with differences in larvae attractiveness." 

Well, there is much more to this than we know at present. If you consider what is known: that many social bees and wasps start the nest by raising small workers, then as the become more prosperous they begin to raise males and queens. 

We know that a similar thing takes place with honeybees, and it has always been assumed to be driven primarily by food quantity in the case of queens and workers; and by fertilization in the case of the males. However, none of this rules out other factors. There are various developmental switches in nature that lead to male/female and caste distinctions. 

Some are environmentally triggered by temperature, some by food, some by stress. In the case of the queen bee, there is nothing to rule out the queen eggs to be specially prepared, hence slightly heavier and more attractive. 

We don't know if she can select eggs for queen-hood, but there may be developmental switches that she controls. In fact, rather than the queen egg being special, it may be the "normal" egg and the worker eggs may be actually deprived of some essential factors, or at least headed down another path.

In any case, there certainly is no reason to assume that the queen development starts only after the larvae are already a day old; it could begin long before that but we have never looked for the signs. There would presumably be things like gene expression, protein levels, methylation, etc. 

PLB

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