old queen with packages?? many drones in worker cell

we BEE crawson · May 20, 2008, 06:15:53 PM

hay all I was wondering if any one has gotten an old queen or failing queen with a package?? I went into one of my hives today and it seemed to have a large ratio of drones and also drones being raised in worker cell with the caps sticking out from the drawn comb. Also i think they might be raising new queens... as i pulled out one of the frames the burr comb on the bottom of the frame broke open. The cells might have been queen cells ie peanut shaped sort of but it was torn open exposing larva so i am not so sure. the larva was huge so perhaps it was a drone cell ... there are a lot of them(drone cells). Total newbee freakout what should i do ?? I did see day old eggs so the queen is not dead but i am concerned with the number of drones HELP????

Kathyp · May 20, 2008, 06:53:23 PM

i would do nothing. if they need to replace the queen, they will do so. some of us have been noticing a lot of drones this year. it may go hand in hand with all the swarms we are seeing. if you have a healthy hive with a laying queen, your best course of action is to take none. watch and see what happens.

we BEE crawson · May 20, 2008, 07:11:12 PM

after reading in the abc xyz book i think my hive condition may be a drone laying queen. What should i do ???

poka-bee · May 20, 2008, 08:33:55 PM

I'm new too & there do seem to be a lot of drone cells. To my mind how many couch potatoes does a hive need?? :evil: Mine are all on the edges & in the corners of the frames, they look like kix cereal (got that from someone on this forum) BUT we aren't bees & there are tons of new bees & worker comb too so things are as they should be for now! They know how to be bees better than we... 8-)

Kathyp · May 20, 2008, 08:47:44 PM

if you have worker brood and drone cells, you should not have a drone laying queen/virgin queen. you may not have a great queen. what is the placement of the eggs in the cells? what is the brood pattern. where are the drone cells in relation to the 'normal' cells? pictures??? :-)

if you google images of "drone laying queen", you'll see what that looks like. you can compare it to what you have.

Michael Bush · May 21, 2008, 07:28:27 AM

>hay all I was wondering if any one has gotten an old queen or failing queen with a package??

A lot of failing queens and drone laying queens this year.

we BEE crawson · May 21, 2008, 09:47:01 AM

thank for the 411 I am going to take pics today so you can see the situation but I need to have them posted by someone else ...who do i send them to??

Scadsobees · May 21, 2008, 02:35:11 PM

If you are seeing worker brood, they are also probably trying to supercede her. Find out for sure if what you saw was a queen cell, and if so then your best bet is to leave them be.

If you are not sure, and don't think that was a queen cell, then you can just re-queen the hive (I make it sound so simple... :roll: )

Sure, there will be too many drones for a while, but they can adapt to that. I had too many drones in one hive and ended up shaking most of them out and puting a queen excluder on the bottom and then eventually had to get all the drones packed on the bottom board out. Not worth it if you can avoid it.

Rick

Michael Bush · May 24, 2008, 10:09:16 PM

If you got a drone laying queen, inform your supplier. Maybe they will send you a good queen. Maybe they won't, but at least they will have the opportunity. If you have a hive with worker brood in it, give them a frame of eggs and open brood so they can get a queen going.