I am thinking of trying to find out how a new generation of bees act and behave without the influance of older bees. Don't know if I will try or not but it is a idea I have though about.
If you wanted microbial isolation, you would have to sterilize a cell and put a clean egg in it. The young have been feed by adult bees for several days before they enter the pupal capped brood stage. By that time, they have been exposed to anything the colony has.
Yes, the larvae are fed before they pupate - also before pupation they shed their stomach and all of it's contents, including microbes. Emerging bees are sterile and acquire their microbial cultures through the chewing out of cells and mostly, through being fed by adults and, I suspect, cleaning poop in the hive.
I'm not talking about "pathogens", rather the gut microbes and honey stomach microbes they need to process and assimilate their food, among other things.
Without adult bees to pass on these complex, microbial cultures, I'm not sure they will fare very well.
Sounds like an interesting experiment. It may be difficult to find brood with no open larvae. But I suppose a small percentage of decomposing larvae shouldn't affect anything.
I am not sure how much microbial isolation you will end up with. I have seen from at least one source that the bees is fed in the process of emerging in order to have the energy to emerge. I have also read that the bees in the colony may assist in removing the cap from the cell.
In all you might learn what the successful emergence rate might be for unassisted bees. Maybe some things about how emergent bees behave when the are exposed to an abandoned hive.
I'm not saying not to do this, it could be educational, but, taking a segment out of the cycle of the colony life will, I predict, end up w/ dying bees, w/out the nurse bees to take care of the emerging bees. All being part of the whole. That's what I am thinking.
If you do what you are asking about I would really like to know the results.
Have you done any kind of research to find out if someone has already done this? It sorta seems like a Masters Thesis Study, perhaps.
Maybe this is more of a "what else can you use an incubator for" question than on topic but;
Has anyone used an incubator as a queen introduction method for the very timid or that breeder queen? Would a very few house bees on a capped frame safely start a mated queen in an incubator? It would have almost or no foragers and in a few days bees who never knew another queen. Bees would be re leaved of temp-control and guard duty. Kind of a safe haven mini hive introduction until fully accepted. My thought last spring, never built the incubator though.
I discovered the answer to this question on the Glenn Apiaries site they use an incubator to hatch brood with no workers present, as a method of avoiding tracheal mites. Check this out here is the URL http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/cagefiller.html
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