re: #52 darthstar

All larvae have the same characteristics (worker, drone, queen) for the first five days…if you take a larva out of its cell and put it in a cell suspended upside down in a colony with no queen, the workers will treat that cell into a queen cell.

It takes 30 days for them to be ready to hatch. Then we put them in mini colonies called ‘nukes’ and about 7 days later the virgins will fly and mate. Another week and they become laying queens. Then we catch them, put a white dot (with WhiteOut) on their back, and put them in a box with five or six workers to keep them warm and plug it with sugar paste.

Then they go in a mailbox to a beekeeper who needs them.