Summary — We describe a hive design that allows frequent collection of eggs of a defined age with only slight disturbance of the worker bees or the queen. The hive may be operated in the bee yard or in a flight room, and has proven to provide a steady supply of eggs throughout the year. The eggs are placed on small wax-coated plastic cell bases serving as removable bottoms of normal worker cells and are collected without opening the hive. This also makes the eggs more accessible for laboratory manipulation compared to eggs deposited in ordinary frames.

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) is likely to become the major model system for resolving the genetic basis of advanced perceptual and behavioural abilities of highly social insects because of the high level of knowledge regarding its physiology and social behaviour and its ease of handling. Here we report for the first time genetic transformation of honeybees by the production of chimeric larvae obtained by nuclear transplantation, identified by use of a genetic marker. Two chimeras expressed only the genotype of the donor indicating developmental totipotency of nuclei up to the 11th cleavage mitosis. 0 1995 WiIey-Liss, Inc.