Swarm pulled off the pole on the 10th....judging by comb when I xferred to a hive body on the 12th had probably only been in the trap a day or so so ...Checked them in a week (19th and they were gentle) but I didn't see anything that led me to believe they had a queen....looked like a lot of nectar and not much else. Got some time this afternoon and I went back over to do a newspaper combine with another weak nuc that has a queen who was laying and low and behold we have popcorn drone brood in the center of the frame that looks like a textbook laying worker.....its only like 6-8 cells scattered in the center of one frame...not sure how I missed larvae old enough to be capped three days later but it appears I did.
2 questions for any who have seen something like this.
Capped drone brood means 9-10 days correct? If so something was just starting laying laying when I moved them into the NUC...or shortly after. Can laying workers develop that fast?
Or could this just be a very young queen who hasn't got the hang or who is a dud? I didn't see her but once again I didn't spend a lot of time just a quick once over on all the frames since the pattern was so precisely what laying workers look like. Eggs did look centered but they were really scattered and this is brand new cells built on foundation in places they are shallow still so I guess a worker could hit the bottom. My plan is to give them another week to see if it is a queen if she straightens out then consider my options if the brood stays bad and still looks like a LW
With that said...What to do if it is a laying worker?....this isn't a young nurse bee who hasn't ever been out of the hive she was mature enough to fly with the swarm....so its possible she could find her way back from a dump and shake. Do I just dump em and not put the hive body back in place and let the guard bees of the other 2 hives on the stand deal with the laying worker and the others can beg their way back into a hive? Or is there another trick I haven't heard about yet?
Expect the unexpected is becoming my motto this year LOL...I feel like 2016 has been a crash course in some weird stuff here in Key Largo.
Dump them and let them beg into the other hives. The laying workers, which I doubt you have, will quit laying when she is amongst the queen's pheremones.
PS. There is never just one laying worker. Many develop together.
i doubt it too based on the time line....but the random high domed drone caps in worker cells in a loose pattern sure looks like it....we will see what happens in a few days.
Key, I had a package hive a couple of years ago that looked like what you just described. It took a couple of weeks but the queen quit misfiring and went to laying worker eggs. The advantage I had was I saw the queen.
Thanks GSF....thats my hope....just glad to hear its a possibility. This hive was one of the three in the shade that was super aggressive when I moved them from trap to box so I didn't do much inspecting initially and then last weekend i was so worried about them reacting poorly again I kept the inspection to a minimum...saw obvious laying in the other two boxes but this one seemed to be all nectar and no eggs. Somehow missed larvae (darn getting old sucks) but after thinking about how scattered the capped cells are with nectar in between I guess its possible i missed them with bees covering them and me being overly gentle.
Will see what comes of it and give her some time to straighten out.