Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Shipping eggs

3K views 10 replies 6 participants last post by  tarheit 
#1 ·
Is there a procedure for shipping day old eggs.
 
#4 ·
>I'm not sure anyone really has studied this.

"If we attempt to catch the moment when the worm leaves the egg, we must extend our, observations beyond the interior of the hive, for there the continual motion of the bees obscures what passes at the bottom of cells. The egg must be taken out, presented to the microscope, and every change attentively watched. One other precaution is essential. As a certain degree of heat is requisite to hatch the worms, should the eggs be too soon deprived of it they wither and perish."

"If, at the moment the queen lays, her eggs are put into a grated box, and deposited in a strange hive, where there is the necessary degree of heat, the worms come out at the usual time, just as if they had been left in the cells. Thus no extraordinary aid or attention is required for their exclusion."

4 September 1791 François Huber
From New Observations, on the Natural History of Bees
 
#5 ·
With the customs regulations in the US as they are, shipping eggs are allowed and done. I was just hoping that I could get some local knowledge before I asked my friend in Austria about his Carnica stock and getting some eggs to cross with my NWC stock.
 
#6 ·
>>>As soon as the big bee, called the king, laid an egg on the bottom of the cell he walks with his escort to the next cell and lays an egg again.
He lays eight or ten eggs in cells and than he withdraw with the escort deep back in the hive.
The eggs lying 4 days on the bottom of their cells without chancing the figure or the position than suddenly there is a metamorphosis into caterpillars.
The caterpillars are bend on the bottom and from now on there is more and more liquid around them.
We are not sure whether it is food for the young animal or it is sperm from their fertilization because it looks not so clear like honey.
The caterpillars are growing into worms and bees feed them with honey till the whole cell is filled.

Observation of bees and beekeeping
First addition 1568 from Nickel Jakob, born around 1505 die march 1576 at Sprottau / Schlesien, Germany.


PS: during this time they did not know that bees have a queen they talked about a king
 
#8 ·
Axtmann, do you own that book? Where did you see it, that book would bee sweet in my collection.

As for shipping eggs, as long as the enviroment is held at an optimal, and the delivery was quick, i could see no reason for this not to be done, once the eggs arrived to the queen breeder, he could place the frame in a well fed hive with sugar syrup and pollen patty so that when the larvae hatched he could graft, actually, i think it's a splendid idea, it's got me thinking now.
 
#9 ·
Yes, Axtman, and Huber was the one who disproved virtually every one of those fallacies including how the drones mated with the queen and that the substance in the bottom was food and NOT semen and that the queen only mates on one occasion and only outside the hive and the fact that the drones lose their member in the process and that she remains fertile without requiring the presence of drones the rest of her life.

He did not just speculate that the eggs would hatch, if kept the right temperature and humidity without intervention by the workers, but proved it.
 
#10 ·
Yes Michael it takes a long time to find that out, more than 250 years of observation. In the six editions written from lecturer Caspar Höflers and printed 1753 from “Verlag Friedrich Lanckischen Erben, Leibzig”, there is still the same.
Even the bee scientist Maraldi (Paris 1753) thought Nickel Jakob was right.
 
#11 ·
I don't know exactly how fragile eggs are and how temperature changes would affect them. That may be the most difficult aspect.

If you are after crossing them with your stock, why not ship semen, It has no real significant storage requirements (room temperature is best), and keeps for weeks. Of course you would have to have the right equipment to collect and use it, which isn't exactly cheep.

-Tim
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top