> The nurse bees fill the queen cell with a large amount of royal jelly before capping. I have been wondering, how long after capping is it before the larvae uncurls to form a straight worm?? Or has the worm already straightened out before capping??

Following Laidlaw & Eckert, and my own observations, the bees put vastly more royal jelly in the cell than the larvae need for alimentation. You can clearly see this in cells, and their are excellent photographs of this phenomenon in Laidlaw & Eckert's book. Quite obviously, the pupae do not eat this, so if it's there when they stretch out, it's there when they hatch. Why this excess is placed in there is not known, but nature does a lot of things for which we don't know the reasons. This is no justification for stepping in and declaring "there must be a reason" and therefore ...

PLB

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