laying worker question

[rober]

I also just posted this on another site. more the merrier
have had some queen issues in one of my yards. 3 of 4 lost queens. re-queened 2 of those but not the 3rd as it had 3 sealed queen cells. this hive was also totally devoid of brood. last sunday there was still no brood & the 3 queen cells were still sealed. rolled the dice & ordered a queen. went to install her today & the 3 queen cells were still sealed so they must be duds. removed the cells & going thru the hive found 2 frames with small patches of drone cells. some sealed & some were open with larva. I was under the impression that laying workers made workers not drones. another possibility is that I missed a queen cell & there's a badly mated queen? in either scenario I cannot install this queen. i'm going to start a nuc with the queen & watch this hive. maybe I can combine the nuc with this hive using a double screen between them.
any other suggestions??
https://s32.postimg.org/87vcatzpx/20160701_095738.jpg

[Dallasbeek]

Laying workers produce only drones except in EXTREMELY rare instances.  Presence of queen cells should have suppressed development of ovaries in the workers, so yes, the queen cells must be duds, but that's pretty rare in itself, I think. 

[rober]

I tore down the queen cells before I realized there were laying workers & I brought them home. I opened them  a little while ago & turns out one was viable which makes why they started laying more puzzling.

[Psparr]

Little off topic but I did a trap out of a tree and most of the remaining bees absconded. Brought the box home with a handful of bees on a couple frames. A few days later there was a Queen cup with an egg in it. No other eggs anywhere else. Thought it pretty weird. The next day the cup was about torn down and no egg.

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm

[rober]

I put the new queen in a nuc to hold her. I went thru this hive again & looking at the brood pattern i'm starting to lean towards a drone laying queen.