Bee larvae for food?

Did anyone try or just at least research harvesting and preparing honey bee larvae as food supplement?

I mean specifically drone brood, NOT the worker brood..
Thinking about and researching it myself.
Wondering of real-world experiences as well as practical ideas of how it can be done.

Bee larvae is, pretty much, a staple in several Asian countries and is a great protein/mineral source.
Drone larvae is, essentially, a free resource that can be easily generated in large quantity if desired.
Google finds many theoretical sources about this.
I am not going to re-paste them here.

haven't tried it myself, but a friend has. she said brood tastes good, like coconut.

I don't know that I would go so far as to call brood, even drone brood, a free resource, though. the colony does expend a fair amount of metabolic energy raising brood, and removing it is a fairly invasive undertaking. if a person was going to remove the brood anyway, then eating it seems like a great idea.

my friend also said that bears raid hives for the brood, not the honey. I haven't confirmed that independently.

tel jetson wrote:haven't tried it myself, but a friend has. she said brood tastes good, like coconut.

I don't know that I would go so far as to call brood, even drone brood, a free resource, though. the colony does expend a fair amount of metabolic energy raising brood, and removing it is a fairly invasive undertaking. if a person was going to remove the brood anyway, then eating it seems like a great idea.

my friend also said that bears raid hives for the brood, not the honey. I haven't confirmed that independently.

The drone brood is "free" in the sense that I don't spend any money and time raising them.
Just harvest.
Being foundational-less, I got tons of drones last season and why not harvest some of them (varroa control too as a side-effect).

I see roasting them into some dry flake-like supplement (add to cereal, what not). They are really a power-food.

I'd like to hear how exactly your friend ate them.

I have thought of this myself, especially with foundationless frames that tend to produce more drone than other frames on average
I Google as well and found it to be a common practice innother aprts of the world
For those on a keto lifestyle, it's likely a much better product from the hive than the honey and as mention3d can be used as a method of varroa control
As for harvest I would think you would want tobharvest a comb of capped drone brood, perhaps freeze the comb and then when frozen, cut the caps and remove the larvae
My first thought is that they would be best fried in butter or tallow, or perhaps freeze dried as a snack
I'd like to try it someday but it hasn't been my highest priority r3ally so it's a back burner test sorta thing

I'm curious, how do you recognize a drone brood?

I have this image of three Greek letters in a row and the hum of a kegger -- probably not helpful though.

Drone brood is slightly larger and typically sticks out from the surface if the comb