> Previous studies have suggested that a queen may get superseded either because she is failing due to disease (Farrar, 1947; Furgala, 1962), injury (Wed- more, 1942; Cook, 1968), or lower insemination success (Richard et al., 2007).
> If queen reproductive quality is indeed related to the likelihood of supersedure, we would have expected significantly higher rates of supersedure in colonies headed by low-quality queens (i.e., those queens developed from older worker larvae).
> However, despite its observed positive effect on some parameters of colony growth, we did not observe a significant effect of queen reproductive quality on queen supersedure. Evidently, a colony headed by a low-quality queen is not more likely to replace the queen based solely on her reproductive potential.
Rangel, J., Keller, J. J., & Tarpy, D. R. (2013). The effects of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) queen reproductive potential on colony growth. Insectes sociaux, 60(1), 65-73.
PLB
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