Inspected my hives this a.m. and all three looked great w/plenty of brood and activity.
When I later looked at some photos I had snapped, I noticed one frame where there were nice eggs in the bottom of the cells, then all of a sudden there were two or three cells that had double eggs in them.
(http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/6302/ohiobees0192.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/829/ohiobees0192.jpg/)
Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)
I don't know if you can tell from this photo or not. (I had it blown up on my computer and tried to enlarge it here). The double egged cells are near the center, maybe a bit to the left. The rest of the eggs in the cells look normal. I don't think this is an old queen faltering, if anything it may be a younger queen, say less than a month old. I think the hive may have swarmed a few weeks back but not sure.
The hive had several nicely drawn out and capped frames of worker brood and other areas of eggs that I didn't notice had doubles. Did this queen just goof up or should I be worried about a laying worker.
that's fine. new queen will "misfire" sometimes. she'll settle down. as long as you have lots of brood in a reasonably good pattern, it's nothing to worry about.
Quote from: kathyp on July 23, 2011, 02:26:13 PM
that's fine. new queen will "misfire" sometimes. she'll settle down. as long as you have lots of brood in a reasonably good pattern, it's nothing to worry about.
Ditto ---awesome picture ---- hope alot of folk view! Great assistance to the newbee.
I know you first suspect laying worker with multiple eggs in cell and not at the bottom of the cells but evaluation of other conditions should rule it out. EX. Good Pattern, alot of worker brood and no excessive patches of drone brood.
You can check back next week and see if she has things figured out.
Allen,
I plan to do exactly that! I'll keep you all posted.
Linda D
I'm betting a young queen. The only times I've had trouble with laying workers there were typically more then just two eggs/cell and you'll quickly see that they're all drones.