Laying workers

[Heather]

Hi,
I have a problem hive as the new queen never became fertile after the colony swarmed.It is apparent that I now have workers laying as the eggs are high in the cell and multiple - and all drone! Can I ask what action is taken to rectify this - so I can then introduce a fertile queen - many thanks,
Heather

[Robo]

The best way I have found is to "newspaper combine" them with a stronger hive to rid yourself of the laying worker.   Then you can do a split at a later time if you'd like.    You can also take the hive as far away as you can carry it and dump all the bees out onto the ground and return to hive with comb and brood back to it's location.  Theory is that the laying worker will not be able to get back to the hive.  I find this method is not as successful as the newspaper combine.   If you do the dump,  I would wait a few days and give them a frame of eggs and see if they make queen cells. This is the only way to tell if the laying worker is gone.   If they don't  make queen cells, then the laying worker is still there and you will waste your money on a new queen because they will kill her.

Good luck.........

[Scadsobees]

It all depends on what you are willing to do, what you have available, and what you want to acheive....

First make sure that you don't have a drone-laying queen....new queens sometimes lay funny.  If you do have a bad queen then you can just re-queen.

If you know that she is gone (sounds like it, but worth double checking) then .... You can try the two methods previously mentioned.

If you have some capped queen cells from somewhere, you can spray them with scented sugar water, and stick them in there, wait 3 weeks and see if it worked.  This worked for me, although I didn't know it until I'd shaken them all out  :'(  but they did manage to raise a good queen from her eggs.

You can try to add a frame of eggs from a healthy hive, they may try to raise a queen from those.  You may need to repeat this several times.

If you have more than a few hives, it is probably easier to shake them out, or combine them and then do a split later.  If you have one or two hives, and can access eggs or queen cells, that might be worth it for you.

Whatever you do, just freeze all that drone brood, they are runty and there are too many at that point anyway.

Rick

[Michael Bush]

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

[danno1800]

The advice I heard at the recent HAS was to continue to add a frame of eggs each week until the bees make a new Queen. If I remember correctly, the instructor said it is the pheremones from the worker eggs, not the queen, which suppress the reproductive organs of the female workers in a hive. Hope that helps! -Danno