If the bees get honey on their wings they will pick up dirt which makes the scanning difficult. Roger Patterson commented that he had difficulty with one of my samples as he thought the bees may have regurgitated the contents of their honey sacs. I don't think the age of the bees would make any difference unless the colony had been requeened within the last couple of months with the last remnants of the progeny from the previous queen being present.
I wonder if that sampling method gets you and particular age class? Perhaps all bees are programmed to quickly collect up exposed honey before someone else comes along. In an attempt to be kind to them I usually try to look at dead bees off the floor, but (unsurprisingly) the quality of the wings is variable and sometimes I've had terrible trouble getting DrawWing to accept the images.
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