I've not seen this discussed before and wonder what others think …
We ran a queen rearing practical course on Saturday, with about 8 people doing grafting for the first time. The lighting wasn't great and some were struggling to see suitable sized larvae. In parallel an experienced colleague grafted from a 'sister' frame from the same colony.
My expectation would be that the experienced grafter would choose smaller larvae, whereas the beginners were more likely to choose ones that were a bit too big. The two cell bars went into different "Ben Harden" cell raisers.
I checked the cells again this evening. Take was better by the experienced grafter (~80+% of 18). However, the beginners did reassuring well (~50% of 18). However, all the drawn out cells by the experienced grafter were appreciably shorter. All the cells I looked at were pretty well charged with Royal Jelly, but (again) the lighting wasn't good enough to check the larvae size.
After all that … is cell size an indication of the age of grafted larvae? Could you use this an an indication to choose the youngest larvae which should end up the best fed?
I don't think it's anything to do with too few bees in the box with the higher take. Both are pretty busy.
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