First, I apologize to anyone who thinks we have discussed this to death already or else doesn't really care about it enough to even shrug their shoulders. 

Winston suggests that bees move either eggs or young larvae. He wrote:

> These larvae could not have been worker-laid, since [1 ] all larvae developed into viable queens and emerged and [2] all such cells had larvae within three days, the normal egg development time, indicating that they had been laid prior to dequeening. Thus, these brood were moved by workers into newly-constructed queen cups when in the egg or young larval stages.

Punnet & Winston (1983) EVENTS FOLLOWING QUEEN REMOVAL IN COLONIES OF EUROPEAN-DERIVED HONEY BEE RACES (APIS MELLIFERA)

Dietz experimented with moving eggs with forceps:

> It was found that the position of an egg has no significant influence on its ability to hatch. Eggs placed into petri dishes but without regard to their position showed an average of 78% hatchability. Repeated handling or touching an egg seemed to have very little effect on hatching.

ALFRED DIETZ (1964) The Effects of Position on Hatching of Honey Bee Eggs in the Laboratory

PLB

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html