laying worker shakeout.....another take

KeyLargoBees · August 08, 2016, 10:42:02 AM

So I have had two smaller hives this year develop laying workers....one i solved with open brood ....one I shook out.... One of my production honey hives developed laying workers after they superceded their queen and then the new queen didn't make it back from mating (theory) anyway they had very strong numbers and I have been coddling them for 5 weeks letting them keep producing honey....and giving them a frame of open brood and eggs weekly.....so far no luck and still have LW and hive population is starting to dwindle. Pulling all the honey supers for a harvest next week and while I am at it I think I am going to shake them out to break the cycle.

Here's the proposed scenario... I have a hive I cutout 2 weeks ago that had recently swarmed before I got them and had a virgin tiny little queen. She has since mated well and is now laying well but the population is really low so she cant lay many eggs due to bee coverage.....if I do the switcheroo and place that hive in place of the one I am shaking out will the returning foragers move back in and accept her or do I risk them overwhelming the smaller hive and them killing the queen? If the hives had anywhere close to the same population i wouldn't be as concerned but as it is I don't want to sacrifice a small/healthy hive.....or should I just do a newspaper combine after the shake out?

GSF · August 09, 2016, 10:20:43 AM

I don't have much experience with swapping locations so I'd tend to go with the newspaper combo.

Michael Bush · August 09, 2016, 11:44:39 AM

I would not do a newspaper combo with a laying worker hive. Shake them out. Make them beg to get in...

GSF · August 09, 2016, 03:47:01 PM

Thanks Michael, I read laying worker hive but I was thinking weak hive.

Acebird · August 09, 2016, 05:15:15 PM

I would not put the queen right hive in the location of the laying worker hive. That's me...
If a laying worker is laying eggs in a hive can she switch over to a forager instantly to beg her way in? Will she try to lay eggs once in or give up and stay as a forager?

Caribou · August 09, 2016, 05:32:02 PM

Quote from: Acebird on August 09, 2016, 05:15:15 PM
I would not put the queen right hive in the location of the laying worker hive. That's me...
If a laying worker is laying eggs in a hive can she switch over to a forager instantly to beg her way in? Will she try to lay eggs once in or give up and stay as a forager?

The laying worker has to smell like a queen. I can't imagine any other hive would accept her. Pretenders to the throne rarely fare well. If you can identify her then you might let her drown her misery in vodka.

Acebird · August 09, 2016, 08:52:46 PM

I am not sure you are correct about acceptance which is why I asked. Anyhow, I always felt that the best practice with a laying worker hive is to rob the honey, wax or comb that they may have built and dump the bees. Any bees that are any good will beg their way into another hive so nothing of value is lost. I cannot see the value in trying to convince a laying worker hive to go queen right when it doesn't work so often.

PhilK · August 09, 2016, 08:57:12 PM

Quote from: Acebird on August 09, 2016, 08:52:46 PM
I am not sure you are correct about acceptance which is why I asked.

From my understanding the laying worker is perceived to be a 'queen'. This is why the other workers aren't trying to make new queens - because they think they are queen right. To my mind it makes perfect sense that all the other bees would beg their way in, but the laying workers would be turned back at the door - they have a 'queen' pheromone situation going on. To that end I reckon it would work putting a weak QR hive in the place of the LW hive .. all the good workers would be allowed in to bolster numbers and they shouldn't accept any LWs... but who knows with bees!

Acebird · August 10, 2016, 08:39:06 AM

But if you let a laying worker hive go to the point where numbers were dwindling how many good bees would be left? I conclude none, none that would make a difference to a weak hive or any hive for that matter.
In my mind you would be better off taking resources from a strong hive where you know it will make a difference and don't encourage any help from a laying worker hive. If the laying worker hive was discovered early and you wanted to shake them out then there might be some merit. IDK

Michael Bush · August 10, 2016, 09:22:04 AM

>From my understanding the laying worker is perceived to be a 'queen'.

Wrong. There is no "the laying worker". One laying worker makes very little queen pheromone. The problem is that there are thousands of laying workers and together they add up to enough pheromones to convince them that there is a queen somewhere.

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

A queen right strong hive probably has 70 laying workers.

See page 9 of "The Wisdom of the Hive"

"Although worker honey bees cannot mate, they do possess ovaries and can produce viable eggs; hence they do have the potential to have male offspring (in bees and other Hymenoptera, fertilized eggs produce females while unfertilized eggs produce males). It is now clear, however, that this potential is exceedingly rarely realized as long as a colony contains a queen (in queenless colonies, workers eventually lay large numbers of male eggs; see the review in Page and Erickson 1988). One supporting piece of evidence comes from studies of worker ovary development in queenright colonies, which have consistently revealed extremely low levels of development. All studies to date report far fewer than 1 % of workers have ovaries developed sufficiently to lay eggs (reviewed in Ratnieks 1993; see also Visscher 1995a). For example, Ratnieks dissected 10,634 worker bees from 21 colonies and found that only 7 had moderately developed egg (half the size of a completed egg) and that just one had a fully developed egg in her body."

In a laying worker hive more than half of the bees are laying workers:
"More than half of the bees in laying worker colonies have developed ovaries (Sakagami 1954)..."-- Reproduction by worker honey bees (Apis mellifer L.) R.E. Page Jr and E.H. Erickson Jr. - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology August 1988, Volume 23, Issue 2, pp 117-126
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00299895
"Reproductive honey bee workers have considerable fecundity, with laying workers in queenless colonies each producing c. 19-32 eggs per day (Perepelova, 1928, cited in Ribbands, 1953). "--Evidence for a queen-produced egg-marking pheromone and its use in worker policing in the honey bee FLW Ratnieks - Journal of Apicultural Research Volume 34, Issue 1, 1995 - Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00218839.1995.11100883

tjc1 · August 10, 2016, 01:01:06 PM

I would imagine, in a queen right hive in particular, that the other workers are culling a lot of those worker-laid eggs when they are laid multiple eggs in a cell or eggs on the sides of the cells, or in small cells rather than larger drone cells - is that correct?

KeyLargoBees · August 10, 2016, 01:32:17 PM

Thats interesting....i didn't know about the "normal laying workers" in a queen right hive...ok I will get the shakeout scheduled for some time this weekend when traffic anywhere near where the shake will happen or where the hive "was" will be light.....Thanks MB for the clarification.

Michael Bush · August 10, 2016, 05:13:01 PM

>I would imagine, in a queen right hive in particular, that the other workers are culling a lot of those worker-laid eggs when they are laid multiple eggs in a cell or eggs on the sides of the cells, or in small cells rather than larger drone cells - is that correct?

The egg police remove the eggs because they are unfertilized and in worker cells. They continue to try to remove them but once half of the bees are laying workers, there are less and less egg police and more and more laying workers until the egg police have no hope of keeping up. Laying workers aren't trying to lay multiple eggs, they just run out of places to lay and too many of them are laying at once.

tjc1 · August 10, 2016, 07:45:37 PM

Yet another huge hole in my beekeeping knowledge filled in - thanks, Michael. I had always thought that there were one or two laying workers in a queenless hive - I had no idea that half the population eventually participate! I also had no idea that laying workers operate in queen-right hives. Endlessly amazing, the world of bees!

Dallasbeek · August 10, 2016, 08:45:48 PM

Michael, is there any indication that the LW population increases in periods when the queen stops laying as in dearth or winter (not when she simply is non-productive, in which case the bees would seek to supercede her)? If worker ovaries are suppressed by the presence of brood, it might lead one to believe they would start laying sometime in winter or in a dearth, but I've seen nothing in your writing that would indicate that occurs.

PhilK · August 11, 2016, 12:31:17 AM

Regardless of if there is one or many, the laying ones still would not be able to beg their way in to another hive right?

Also does that mean when you shake out a colony of say 50,000 bees then 25,000 remain in a clump behind and they are the workers? That seems like a huge amount of bees!

Acebird · August 11, 2016, 09:24:19 AM

I think a laying worker can fly but doesn't know where the hive is. I can't imagine 50000 bees in a laying worker hive. Sure it can happen but how often? Correct me if I am wrong Michael but a laying worker does not get gigundo like a mated queen does. I'm not sure you can tell the difference between a laying worker and an adult worker bee by size, can you?

Michael Bush · August 11, 2016, 09:40:27 AM

>Michael, is there any indication that the LW population increases in periods when the queen stops laying as in dearth or winter (not when she simply is non-productive, in which case the bees would seek to supercede her)?

I have never observed that nor heard of anyone reporting that. I suppose it's a combination of the queens pheromones and the worker brood pheromones. But then again, even in a dearth there is usually small patch of brood somewhere.

> If worker ovaries are suppressed by the presence of brood, it might lead one to believe they would start laying sometime in winter or in a dearth, but I've seen nothing in your writing that would indicate that occurs.

Winter does not seem to set it off. I don't know if anyone had done any research on whether there are more laying workers in a queenright hive in late winter before brood rearing starts, but then no bee is laying at that time.

>Regardless of if there is one or many, the laying ones still would not be able to beg their way in to another hive right?

That would be an interesting experiment. What I do know is that they don't seem to cause problems when they have to beg their way in. They do when they think they are the queen instead of a begger...

>Also does that mean when you shake out a colony of say 50,000 bees then 25,000 remain in a clump behind and they are the workers? That seems like a huge amount of bees!

No, they do not stay behind.

>I think a laying worker can fly but doesn't know where the hive is.

They all seem to fly back. So I think they do know where the hive is.

> I can't imagine 50000 bees in a laying worker hive. Sure it can happen but how often?

By the time they are half laying workers it's doubtful they still have a lot of bees.

> Correct me if I am wrong Michael but a laying worker does not get gigundo like a mated queen does.

I have caught them in mating nucs that went laying worker and they look slightly bigger, but not enough to be definitive.

> I'm not sure you can tell the difference between a laying worker and an adult worker bee by size, can you?

Not really. Some of the workers are bigger or smaller anyway and while the laying workers seem to fall into the category of larger, so do some of the regular workers...

Acebird · August 11, 2016, 10:12:08 AM

Quote from: Michael Bush on August 11, 2016, 09:40:27 AM
They all seem to fly back. So I think they do know where the hive is.

Then they must not be tended to like a mated queen and go outside the hive on a regular bases to know where it is or do you think other bees are leading the way?

Michael Bush · August 11, 2016, 11:25:44 AM

>Then they must not be tended to like a mated queen and go outside the hive on a regular bases to know where it is or do you think other bees are leading the way?

I don't know for sure HOW they find their way back, but they do. I did shakeouts for laying workers in many different ways and even with an observation hive and it's obvious they all know their way back. A queenright hive they don't all know their way back, but there are younger bees who are nurse bees and have never left the hive in the case of the queenright hive. So I guess I doubt they are following other bees. I would assume they know their way back because they have been outside the hive before.