Small Cell and Queen Size

[Connie Bart]

Assuming a beekeep fully regressed over the spring and summer: If you start with large cell bees and a large cell queen, will the large cell queen still be able to lay in the fully regressed small cells, or will the bees supercede her in favor of a smaller queen?

Thanks for your help.

Connie

[Michael Bush]

>If you start with large cell bees and a large cell queen, will the large cell queen still be able to lay in the fully regressed small cells, or will the bees supercede her in favor of a smaller queen?

Out of fifty hives or so regressed that had large cell queens at the time, I've seen one queen who was just too big to lay in the small cell and she was superceded by the bees. The rest prefered the small cell when they had both available to lay in.

[Phoenix]

I have yet to see anyone mention a difference in size of queens raised by retrogressed bees. I have noticed little difference myself, in the size of supercedure queens in either state of regression.

Michael helped to answer this question for me personally a year or so ago, as I wondered if a large queen could still effectively lay in 4.9 cells. I have since witnessed cell "depth" being directly proportional to "diameter", therefore allowing a larger queen to still efficiently lay in smaller cells.

[Michael Bush]

I don't see a lot of difference in a mature queen for size. There are a variety of sizes of queens and queen cells in both retrogressed and not retrogressed bees.