The ’11 Experiment: The Graft

By , June 23, 2011

Recipe for making 120 super-sister queen bees:

1. Find one-day old larva, laid by the Queen Mum.  They are the small c-shaped grubs, about the same length as the rice-shaped eggs. At this stage, the caste of the female larva has not been ‘set’.

Egg is at the top left corner, 1-day old larva is at the bottom right corner

2. Gently scoop the larva out of the cell

Brock - the official grafter of the '11 Experiment

3. Transfer the larva to a plastic cell cup

Easy does it

4. Repeat 120 times
5. Hang the cell cups vertically  inside a strong queen-less colony. The worker bees will be eager to make a new queen to replace their missing mom –  they will feed the very young larva in the cups lots of royal jelly, which starts the queen development program.
6. Your queens will be ready in 12 days!

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