The ’11 Experiment: The Graft
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!
