laying workers and queen cells NEW PLAN!!

[Kathyp]

if you have laying workers will the bees try to make queen cells from those eggs?  i am queenless, but have many capped queen cells.  i see no sign of them opening, but may be a few days early.  i have a package coming and want to do a combine.  i DO NOT want a good queen hatching out after i have combined the hives!

any thoughts?

[Understudy]

If a worker is laying. The bees cannot turn those into queen cells. If you have queen cells the bees took some of the existing brood and fed them royal jelly. This why when doing a cut out, getting the brood frames are important. If there are eggs or larvae the bees will try to convert those cells if the queen didn't survive or got missed in a cut out. If you buy a queen before the cells hatch the bees will either destroy the cells or the queen will kill the virgin queens.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Kathyp]

ok.  i'll give the package a separate home and wait a bit for those queen cells to hatch.  the bees seem happy, so there is no big rush.  they can wait until next week or so.

thanks.

[Michael Bush]

>if you have laying workers will the bees try to make queen cells from those eggs?  i am queenless, but have many capped queen cells.

http://www.bushfarms.com/huber.htm#maleeggsinroyalcells

This also applies to laying worker hives.

[Kathyp]

so there may not be queens in those cells?  what should i do?  wait and see if i get a queen, or scrape all of them and buy a queen.  the latter seems more risky in the short term, but i know i must get a queen in there.   how long can i wait?  i found the queen cells on the 3rd of april.  because of bad weather, i had not really gotten into the hive much before that. 

[Understudy]

from Michael's link.
The Lusatian observers, and those of the Palatinate, affirm, that when common bees are confined with combs absolutely void of eggs, they then lay none but the eggs of drones. Thus, there must be small queens producing the eggs of males only, for it is evident they must have produced those supposed to come from workers. But how is it possible to conceive that their ovaries contain male eggs alone?

Fertile workers never lay the eggs of common bees; they produce none but those of males.

darn Michael I read that whole thing.

Yes, kathyp you may have queen cells.

Therefore, I consider it an established fact, when bees lose their queen, and several workers' worms are preserved in the hive, they enlarge some of their cells, and supply them not only with a different kind of food, but a greater quantity of it, and the worms reared in this manner, instead of changing to common bees, become real queens.

So it seems like everything I said in my original post still stands.

Now onto my theroy. Queens take almost a month before they start laying. The number of workers in a hive can drop dramatically in that time. You can wait and let the queen cells do their natural thing but you may end up with a very weak hive that may not make it. This why I am cautious on letting nature take it's course. If you buy a queen and the workers accept it. They will destroy the queen cells. Now if you buy a queen and the virgin queens have come out of the cells they will fight. If your queen wins she will start laying. If she loses you have to wait for a succesful mating flight.

I tend to support buying a queen and letting the hive do it's thing. However there is also one other way you can do this. If you can add brood to keep the worker count up than you do not need to buy a queen. Because as you have noted they have queen cells. So the question is do you have some brood to spare to keep the count up.
If yes then don't buy a queen. If no I would buy a queen.

Now I state this for this reason, if the worker count drops on a hive in Florida the pests take over. The wax moth and small hive beetles take over.  You may not be in the same situation. Also another factor is temperatures. Within the next month it must also warm up enough for a virgin queen to take a mating flight. I know spring is coming but these freak weather patterns had it snowing in some places last weekend. I tend to err on the side of caution. If you are confident in the temperatures coming up in the next 20 or so days and you feel the hive has enough workers to make it. You do not have to buy a queen just let the queen cells hatch and the virgin go on a mating flight.

I know this isn't a very specfic answer to the questions you posed. The thing is you have options. Each as acceptable as the other.


Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Kathyp]

i read the whole thing too, but it added to my confusion.  :-)  that's not a hard thing to do.

the weather is warming.  i do not have brood to give them.  i am interested in seeing what is going to happen in there if i do nothing.  i'll consider this an experiment.  i will still have the option of buying a queen if i don't wait to long, or combining them with the package i am getting if i end up with no queen.

i had hoped to build up this year, but that's not going to happen at this rate.  guess i'll pray for swarms!

[Understudy]

Just keep us posted.


Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Michael Bush]

OK.  If you have any larvae young enough and no queen they will raise one.  But if they have nothing but drone larvae they will still build queen cells with those and they will have drones in them.

In other words, a queen cell and a lot of multiple eggs is not a hopeful sign.  A queen cell and no eggs is not such a bad sign.  A queen cell and larvae is a pretty good sign.

[Kathyp]

thanks for the translation :-) 

[Cindi]

Some good points.  Have a wonderful, day, good health.  Cindi

[Michael Bush]

One other point of "translation".  Huber calls any egg that can grow to maturity "fertile".  In the sense he meant it, drone eggs are fertile.  It was not known at the time that drones were unfertilized (meaning uninseminated) eggs.  Huber had just discovered that if you postponed mating a queen long enough she laid nothing but drones, but had not yet made the connection (nor had anyone else).  Heck, Huber had just figured out that the queen mated outside the hive and proved she actually mated with drones (a subject that had been much discussed at the time and many thought the queen did not mate with them as no one had ever observed it).

[acbs]

Something had happened to one of my queens last summer, and the worker(s) started laying.  (Never understood why they didn't notice soon enough to make fertile emergency cells.)  The queen cells they made from the worker eggs looked more like puny emergency cells or extended drone cells, rather than the larger healthy queen cells.  I was amazed the bees couldn't tell the difference.  They seem to "know" so much about what is going on. 

Had a queen early this spring that was laying nothing but drones.  They "knew" something was wrong and were trying to replace her, but they didn't "know" enough that they were trying to make a queen out of unfertilized eggs.  I got rid of her and joined her bees with newspaper to a couple of other hives until I have enough drones to breed a new queen.

[Kathyp]

ok.  i can get a queen next week.  here is what i'm going to do, unless you guys tell me it's a really bad plan.

i am going to pull the frames with the queen cells.  they don't look like the best of cells anyway (thanks acbs).  i am going to install the new queen and replace those frames with new foundation.  i'll leave the queen caged and see if they accept her in a couple of days.  if they do, it's all good.  if they don't, i'll make a small split in a shallow super and see if i can build a new hive with the new queen and some workers.

[Michael Bush]

Do you have laying workers?  Lots of multiple eggs?  If so, at a minimum I'd do a push in cage release (which will still probably fail).

[Kathyp]

i don't think i do.  i can't find any eggs.  i probably will if i wait much longer?

[Understudy]

No, you will not get a laying worker if you have fresh queen cells. The laying worker is a item of last resort for a hive. If you want to pull the frames with the queen cells and put them in a seperate hive that is fine but I don't think you have the workers to spare.

now if you really want to experiment you can very carefully cut out the queen cells and glue them to a jar lid and see what comes out in a few days. This is something you have to be careful when you do but what a great learning expierence.

And if they do come out as virgin queens well you can always put those to good use.
If they come out as baby aliens with 600 rows of sharp pointy teeth, let us know, right away.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Kathyp]

i was going to pull those frames and toss them in the freezer for another day.  i would replace them with new foundation and put the new queen in.  crap shoot probably, but....

i like the jar idea.  i think i'll do that.  if anything comes out i'll get pics, but if they are alien, i'm going to sell them.  i won't post them for free :-)

[Cindi]

Just some two cents to carry on from Michael's statement about laying workers.  The queen lays hers eggs in the centre bottom of the cell, usually one per cell, standing straight up.  Now and then when a younger queen begins to lay she will have so many eggs that she may lay more than one.

Laying workers can easily be identified by mutiple eggs in all parts of each cell, even quite often around the sides, very sporadic looking and quite easily seen.  The reason for this weird laying pattern is that the laying worker bee does not have such the long, long, abdomen, as the queen does, hence the eggs are not sitting right into the bottom of the cell, and being attached to the bottom of the cell, because she cannot reach the bottom of the cell with her abdomen.

Await for responses from other members, they will have input, take what you need.  Have a wonderful night, beautiful day, and good health.   Cindi

[Kathyp]

got a new queen in there today.  they seem happy with her but i won't release her until tomorrow unless they beat me to it.