Raising Bigger Queens. With thanks to the Apiarist

[alancooper]

Queens lay 3 types of eggs: Worker, Drone and Queen.
Laying of the queen egg is triggered by the size of the queen cell. Yet, most queen rearing techniques use worker eggs.
I remember several beekeepers telling me swarm and suoerceedure cells produce the best queens. Now, we know why.

"More research is needed, but the key observation is that queens lay bigger eggs in queen cups than they do in worker cells. These develop into bigger queens. Furthermore, these bigger queens 'perform' better in terms of brood production, and the trait appears to be inherited."

https://theapiarist.org/bigger-queens-better-queens-part-1/
https://theapiarist.org/bigger-queens-better-queens-part-2/
https://theapiarist.org/bigger-queens-better-queens-part-3/

This implies queens produced using worker eggs don't lay/live as long as those from queen eggs.
I assume this has important implications for commercially bred queens

Your implications are flawed. I do hope someone has the patience to explain why.

 

[SWEET]

Workers will move eggs into Q-Cups, they also shape standard cells into Q-cells. I'd like to know how the queen lays 3 different types of egg, she lays an egg and it's either fertilised or not (unless there is some egg shaping/delay* based on cell size).

Either way, Queens reared from *worker* eggs have zero issues filling a DB hive with brood (triple even), so unsure if an issue.

*the paper(s) touch on that.