Does this look normal to you?

[diggity]

These are pictures from a hive that swarmed back in July (this is the original parent hive).  For a while I was concerned because I didn't see any brood in the hive and thought they had failed to raise a new queen.  Then a week or so ago I finally saw brood and figured all was well.  Now yesterday I went in there again and took a closer look at the brood and took these pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bkdiggity/Bees#

Is this all drone brood?  I'm afraid I'm not yet experienced enough to be able to recognize drone brood with complete certainty.  But to my inexperienced eyes, this looks like drone brood.  The problem is, that's ALL I see... I don't see any smaller capped brood that I would associated as being female.  There are 2 deeps and one medium honey super (which I should probably take off because they aren't filling it).  The upper deep is mostly full of honey, and the lower has honey, pollen, and brood, all of which looks like these pictures. 

Do I have a laying worker??

Thanks!
-Diggity

[Kathyp]

that's all drone brood and the only egg i could see well in a cell looks like it was attached to the side of the cell.  looks like they had a go a make a queen.  she could have been lost.

[JP]

Drone brood, lots of it. You may want to consolidate or combine this hive with another and pull some honey/feed some honey. Wax moth/shb could be right around the corner, decision time.


...JP

[sc-bee]

>Do I have a laying worker??

Good possibility! As JP said time to make a move. SHB probably not a problem in your area ---- but most likely doomed as to strength.

How strong is the entire colony. Enough to maybe salvage a nuc shaken down, to less frames, with a new queen. But of course I can winter nucs here in the South not sure with your location or how much build up time you have left. Check with beeks in your area --- ask: combine or try new queen?

[diggity]

Crud... that's what I was afraid of.  Well, I guess I could combine the hive with other half that swarmed.  That colony seems to be doing OK (not fantastic, but OK).  So you think I could do a combination at the same time as a shakeoff?

Thanks!
-Diggity

[leominsterbeeman]

Looks  like laying worker. 

I have heard of this recommendation:

The brood pheremone can supress the laying worker.   
Do you have other hives to take a frames of brood from?   You could give them a frame of brood now , and see if they make queen cells.  then give them another frame in 5 days. Then another in 5 days again.  If they don't start building queen cells  - its too late to recover and you can try something else.

Good luck.

[Kathyp]

leo, that is a good thing to try earlier in the  year.  at this time, it's to late.  it's either shake them out and let them join other hives, or do a combine. 

[diggity]

Kathy, I'm a little confused about how the combine would go.  If I simply combine them, won't the laying worker from Colony A fight with the queen from Colony B?  Should I put A on top of B or vice versa?  (It would be a lot easier to put B on top of A, since that hive is smaller and lighter).

Michael, glad to find someone local on this forum!  I'm in Hubbardston, not far from you.

Thanks!
-Diggity

[Kathyp]

that is a risk and it is why i prefer the shake out.  others do not like that method.  if you take the hive away from  your others and take an empty box, you can easily do a shake out.  just clear each frame by brushing the bees off.  put the empty frame in your empty box (with cover) and move to next frame.  do not give them their hive back.  they will join your other hives without problem.

the newspaper combine would probably work ok, but it is not my preferred method for a laying worker hive....but then, i have been fortunate not to have had to deal with that to much.  if you find advice from others with more experience, by all means, take it.  :-)

[Eshu]

I had one like that this year.  They swarmed and made a queen, but she didn't mate properly.  You could have a drone laying queen...

[diggity]

Well, I did the shakeout/combination a week and a half ago.  I checked them this past weekend, and it looks like it was a success!  There's new brood (not drone), and they all seem to be co-habitating well.  Everything looks pretty good now to me.  For the record, here's how I did the shakeout/combination - it probably wasn't the most orthodox way to do it, but it seemed to work:

Hive #1 was the original hive, which then swarmed and produced a laying worker.  The swarm became Hive #2. 

There were 2 deeps on Hive #1, which I removed one by one, and took about 25 feet away.  I took each frame out, brushed all the bees off, then quickly stuck the frame in a spare empty deep super and covered it, so that they wouldn't return to it.  It took about 15 minutes to brush off all 20 frames, but it wasn't too difficult.  I expected that the bees would be very aggressive toward me, but they weren't really.  I think they were more confused than angry.  They all flew back to the bottom board (all except for the laying worker I assume), which was still on the stand 25 feet away.  By the time I was done, the bottom board was totally covered with bees.

Step 2 was to take the Hive #2 and put the whole thing on the bottom board from Hive #1, where all the bees from Hive #1 were congregated.  Hive #2 consisted only of a single deep, so it was easy to pick the whole thing up and put it on Hive #1's bottom board.  The only catch was that I had to keep brushing bees off the bottom board so that I wouldn't squish them.

Step 3 was to go back to the frames from Hive #1, now cleared of bees.  These frames had lots of drone brood and quite a bit of honey on them.  I sorted through the frames and found 10 that consisted mostly of honey.  I put these 10 in a deep box and put it on top of the newly combined hive to give them more room.  So the newly combined hive now has 2 deeps.

The remaining frames - the ones consisting mostly of drone brood - I left covered for 2 days so that nobody would get confused (being as they were, 25 feet away from the new hive).  After 2 days I uncovered them and let the bees scavenge the honey out of them, which they did very efficiently!  The frames were all clean within about 2 days.  I'm not sure what happened to all the capped drone brood that was in there - they probably all died, I don't really care.

Anyway, this all started back in July when they swarmed.  It has been quite an ordeal since then, but I think it's over now and everybody is happy.  In a way I'm kinda glad it happened, because I have learned so much through this saga.  It's fascinating!

Thanks again,
-Diggity

[David LaFerney]

Thanks for the update - that is pretty informative.  I've been watching this thread wondering what would happen.

[Kathyp]

what you did was just fine and i'm glad it worked for you.  you made a little extra work for yourself by moving the other hive onto the bottom board, but that's ok.  you could have taken that bb out and brushed it also.  they would have gone back to the original site, and finding no sign of the hive would have moved into the other by night.  you way would certainly be an advantage if the weather were not co-operating.

laying workers do fly and they will enter the other hive also.  it is possible that they continue to try laying.  i don't know if they are killed, or if they give it up after a period of time in the the queen-right hive. 

i would like to know, if anyone has that info.

[Mason]

How do you know if it is drone brood or "regular" brood?

[hardwood]

Mason,
Drone brood is capped with a bullet-shaped cap where as worker brood is capped almost flat.
Scott

[Kathyp]

http://www.masterbeekeeper.org/calendar/popup/drone_brood.htm

frame on left: worker brood on top.  drone brood on bottom.  drone brood is raised like kix cereal  :-)