> The nurse bees fill the queen cell with a large amount of royal jelly before capping.
>> Quite obviously, the pupae do not eat this, so if it's there when they stretch out, it's there when they hatch.
A couple of weeks ago I was putting '9-day' queen cells into hives. Whether poor grafting or a too-warm incubator, about half of the queens had hatched in the carricell - the others were in the process of cutting their way out too. When I pulled the cell out of its sponge holder, I'd be looking at an open ended cell... and a virgin butt. All but one of the queens who had hatched had headed back into the cell head-first and were actively eating the royal jelly.
I don't know whether they would do this on emergence in a hive setting - perhaps in a hive it's an opportunity for a virgin to feed and 'harden off' a little without drawing attention to herself by asking to be fed.
regards
Deanna Corbett
Hawke's Bay, New Zealand
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