>> The bees that experienced larval starvation had fewer ovarioles, higher hemolymph JH titer and lower sucrose responsiveness, but had no change in Vg mRNA.

In my mind, the key point is the effect of dietary restriction. I have intuitively felt that this was the most plausible trigger that switches bees from short lived to long lived, in anticipation of a dearth period, whether summer drought or temperate winter. To me, other suggestions such as a day length trigger. As we know, lifespan extension is a feature of temperate honey bees, whereas tropical bees will abscond and migrate in response to poor environmental conditions. What is different about the current work is that they show how the bees might control the developing bees by restricting their food intake, which is different from the dietary restriction being imposed upon them by the environment. They wrote

Our results suggest that honey bees can adaptively respond 
to the predicted nutritional stress. ... Overall, our study provides 
further evidence that early larval starvation specifically improves 
the metabolic responses to adult starvation in honey bees.

We found that, compared with control bees, the bees that
were starved as larvae were able to reduce their metabolic rate, more
quickly shift away from carbohydrate use and keep blood sugar
concentrations more stable during adult starvation. We conclude
that short-term starvation during larval stages alters the metabolic
responses of adult bees to starvation, increasing the probability
of their survival under starvation.

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