why? they can't feed royal jelly to an egg - it just sits there until it hatches then is when it needs tending by young nurse bees with the ability to feed it properly
This is interesting - I knew I had read somewhere that bees preferred to raise new queens from 3 day old eggs and that queens reared from eggs were generally bigger than ones raised from larvae.
https://theapiarist.org/the-bees-know-best/
He quotes two studies on the subject.
Hatch, S., Tarpy, D. & Fletcher, D. Worker regulation of emergency queen rearing in honey bee colonies and the resultant variation in queen quality. Insectes soc. 46, 372–377 (1999).
Tarpy, D.R., Simone-Finstrom, M. & Linksvayer, T.A. Honey bee colonies regulate queen reproductive traits by controlling which queens survive to adulthood. Insect. Soc. 63, 169–174 (2016
The conclusions were that, although the queens were bigger when they came from three day old eggs there was little difference in their internal ability to produce eggs. However, there was suggestion that the larger queens were preferred by the colony as larger queens have better chances of fighting to become the sole surviving queen and that larger queens have more chances when it comes to mating - in terms of their ability to secure the best drones as they will be faster and higher flyers and presumably this will have an impact on their fecundity and longevity (although this does not appear to have been comprehensively established).
Also of interest was that the bees tore down a larger percentage of queen cells built around 2 day old eggs and those built on larvae - the biggest percentage being torn down being those queen cells built on three day old larvae.
I'm a great believer (As are you) that working with the bees is far more productive in beekeeping terms than forcing them down a route that makes life more difficult for them.
So, technically, you are correct but ... from a beekeepers viewpoint, when you are trying to raise good queens, by introducing material to a colony from which you intend them to create queens, then the 'best' queens are going to be reared from eggs that are three days old. Hence - when introducing a frame or section of 'eggs and larvae' to a colony it would appear important that the frame does contain eggs, rather than just larvae ? Indeed, a mix of larvae and 1, 2 & 3 day eggs would appear to be ideal.
It's a fifteen minute read - there's a few other things in there as well - but well worth the effort. It doesn't actually classify queens raised from larvae as 'scrub queens' but if these are smaller (and clearly not as desirable to the bees) then my take on it would be that these larval based queens are what I would consider 'scrub queens'.
