Laying worker update!!

[Scadsobees]

i wonder how it would work to take a couple of frames of eggs and brood with nurse bees, and put them in a nuc for a few days.  just long enough for them to start queen cells.  then you could transfer those to the hive and hope for the best? 

I would think that that would work fine.

It sounds like another method of dealing with laying workers...make a small split and they can raise one or add a queen and then combine that to the LWC with screenboard.  The screenboard allows the queen to lay in the small happy queenright hive and the combine to take longer allowing the better queen acceptance.

-r

[annette]

OK this is the end of week number 3 and I have some good news and maybe bad news.  They finally made a queen cell, in fact 2 queen cells, but they are on the bottom of the frame meaning they are swarm cells but they are puny queen cells.  I feel good about this because at last they have it in their minds to make the queen cells, so what I did was give them 2 more frames of really small open brood. I actually found 2 really good frames and maybe this week they can finally make a supercedure cell.

So my question is what do I do if they continue to just make swarm cells??? I cannot imagine this little hive wanting to swarm.

Any input is appreciated.

Thank you
Annette

[Michael Bush]

>They finally made a queen cell, in fact 2 queen cells, but they are on the bottom of the frame meaning they are swarm cells

Not at all.  Emergency cells might be anywhere.  A hive that has been queenless that long is not making swarm cells.

> but they are puny queen cells.

Queen cells vary greatly in size.  I've never seen any correlation between the size of the cell and the size of the queen, nor the size of a virgin queen and the size of the same queen when she's laying.

> I feel good about this because at last they have it in their minds to make the queen cells, so what I did was give them 2 more frames of really small open brood. I actually found 2 really good frames and maybe this week they can finally make a supercedure cell.

I won't hurt to give them more brood.  But let them finish the queens they start.

[annette]

OH Boy!!!!! This is really great news and I think I have succeeded finally in getting this queenless hive on the right track. Time will tell, but it is encouraging news.  Thanks for the advice

Sincerely
Annette