I tried grafting eggs and bee cleaned them from the queen cup. I would be interested to here if anyone had this work. I would be shocked if it did.
Thanks for the response, Peter. Some comments:Aside from the fact that bee eggs are very difficult to handle, the main reason for grafting (transferring) larvae is you can tell what age they are.
If you give a frame to a queen and pull it at four days, the larvae will be one day old or less. The eggs will be anything from zero to three days old.
Once you get a sense of the correct size, you will recognize a one or two day old larva. One day old is just about too small to pick up, about the size of the egg. Two day olders are a bit easier to see and handle.
I've gotton two beautiful queen cells out of my first attempt of grafting/transferring at the early larvae stage (few larvae in the Nicot Cage apparently because I let the cups get honey-bound before introducing the queen and did not clean it out for the queen - lesson for next time).>Is there any reason this is a bad idea?
It's a great idea.
> Has anyone tried it?
Yes, and it doesn't work. Maybe if the eggs were in the process of hatching you might get them to not eat the eggs, but my experience is they just remove them.