> There is plenty of evidence that the bees raise queens from larvae that
> are
> already 'old' by the time that decisions are made to raise queens from
> them,
> purely by inference from emergence timing.

All this logic is based, however, on assumptions that are themselves, IMO,
flawed, the least reliable assumption of the set being the assumption that
emergence timing is correlated with the age of the larva at the start in
more than a loose fashion.

In my long experience, I have found that even queens in a batch of
apparently well-fed and well-raised queens grafted from larvae of the same
size, and presumably the same age, do not necessarily all emerge reliably
when expected.  I have  seen as much as several days difference in batches
which were carefully selected, grafted, and managed through their
development.  This variability may be attributed to many factors, such as
variability in genetics in the same batch of eggs, position on the bar,
nutrition, etc., but who really knows?   Moreover, the assumption is made
that the bees have no way of rushing development of some queens.  We simply
do not know.

Logic is fine, but until someone actually makes a scientific, quantitative
comparison between grafted queens and emergency queens raised under
comparable conditions of season, nutrition, etc., I have to point out that
this is merely an unproven hypothesis, and one based on a fairly long chain
of potentially shaky reasoning, and not proven fact.

Sorry.

allen

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