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👑 Queen Rearing by Grafting

An interactive 3D grafting bar and cell-builder colony: pick larva age, nurse-bee density and colony type to see which grafted queen cups get accepted and drawn into capped queen cells.

Entomology & Insect Behaviour3DModerate60 FPS

A grafting bar of wax queen cups sits inside a cell-builder colony while a curved grafting tool ferries young larvae from the donor brood comb — watch nurse bees decide which cups to accept and draw out into capped queen cells.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Grafted-larva age and cell-builder nurse-bee strength jointly determine acceptance probability; accepted cups are progressively lengthened with royal jelly over several simulated days, while rejected ones are chewed down.

🎮 How to Use

Set the donor larva's age, the nurse-bee density, how many cups are on the bar, and whether the cell builder is queenless or queenright, then run the time-lapse and watch the acceptance rate update live.

💡 Did You Know?

Queens can only be reared from larvae under about 3 days old — after that the fed diet and developmental window for a fully-formed queen closes, and workers develop instead.

⚙ Under the hood

An interactive 3D grafting bar and cell-builder colony where a grafting tool transfers larvae of a chosen age from a donor brood comb into queen cups, and nurse bees — whose density and colony queen-status you control — probabilistically accept or reject each cup, drawing accepted ones into capped queen cells over a time-lapsed sequence of simulated days.

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3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install