This study pointed out that it wasn't just due to the increased sugar
content of the jelly fed to queen larvae, which is an important finding.
But more importantly, it confirms that there is apparently nothing "royal"
about royal jelly.  Nurses produce jelly, and feed more of it, along with
additional nectar, to queen larvae.

I found the influence of egg size to be of great interest -- I'll have to
try that, since I already restrict the egg laying by my breeder queens by
keeping them confined between queen excluder frames.

I'm quite curious about why a half mm difference in cell diameter would
make a difference -- resulting in queens emerging at 250 mg instead of 200
mg.  That's a helluva difference for such a tiny change in cell cup
diameter, so I'd like to see this study replicated -- especially since the
authors didn't describe what sorts of queen cell cups they were using
(beeswax, plastic, or how formed).

The following quote from the paper is confusing to me:
"With the increase of larvae, the food intake also increased. The bigger
the queen cells were, the more fresh royal jelly was given. So the older
larvae in bigger queen cells had enough fresh royal jelly for food
everyday, while the older larvae in smaller queen cells did have enough who
went on to ingest the remaining jelly left before."

I keep tabs on the amount of jelly remaining in our plastic queen cells
after pupation.  If there is leftover jelly, that indicates to me that the
queen larvae were fed to excess.  The above sentence suggests that in their
experiment that the larvae in the smaller cells may not have been fed to
excess.

If the "best" queens actually come from 10 mm cell cups, then why would
"naturally built" queen cells be smaller?
I just measured some of my JZs BZs cell cups.  They are slightly larger
than 8 mm at the entrance, and taper down.  I drilled one out to 10 mm, but
it weakened.  I'll try to stop by the hardware store and pick up some 10 mm
rod to see whether I can enlarge some with a heated steel rod.  Since I'm
still grafting, I'd like to replicate the experiment.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html