Yesterday I went into the brood box to open it up in preparation for the coming spring. The girls have been pretty active in recent weeks with an unseasonal warm spell. There was quite a lot of worker brood and plenty of pollen and nectar coming in and plenty of room for the queen to lay.
When I put the super back on I checked on the situation there with regards to any change in capped honey. There was! A significant increase over an inspection three weeks ago.
But it was the presence of a handful of capped and uncapped drone cells on some frames that captured my attention. What were they doing there if the Queen was below the excluder? I have to admit being puzzled by this. Is she able to delegate this role to another worker in an area that she can't access herself?
Mick
Mick,
There are a couple of things that may be going on.
Do you have a top entrance? The queen may have crawled out and up to the top entrance but I would expect to hear that you have worker brood if she did that. An experienced beek friend of mine has had that happen.
Are the brood in drone cells or worker size cells? You probably have a laying worker laying eggs and for some reason, probably the excluder, the worker bees are not removing them.
Jim
No top entry, Jim. I was guessing that I might've had a laying worker in the super. There is no worker brood in the super, just sealed and uncapped drone brood. Not a lot of it. Couldn't see eggs but then again I'm not too good at seeing eggs even with my reading glasses on.
I don't imagine that the drones will manage to get through the QX so I am wondering what I should do about the cells that are already there.
Mick
Either use your decapper tool, the one with the tines, to remove the capped drones or add a top entrance to allow them to get out.
If you use the decapper, that is a good way to check for and remove mites.
To remove the drone larvae, just use it like a fork pushing it through the caps and then lift them out.
Jim
The question then is how do I deal with an active queen in the brood box and laying worker/s in the super?
Mick
Usually the bees will take care of the problem. Most hives have laying workers but the bees remove the eggs.
The queen excluder is probably causing the problem by not allowing the queens retinue bees from carrying the queens pheromones above the QE.
Try removing it and see what happens.
I do not use them except to keep the queen in a new hive from a cutout or swarm.
Jim