Drone laying workers or drone laying queen

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Curley

House Bee
Joined
May 29, 2014
Messages
364
Reaction score
7
Location
Wilts
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
8
Hi

First year novice beekeeper with two small colonies.

One from a cast swarm (a bit less that 2 pints of bees) on May Bank holiday weekend put in a nuc box with foundation only. Bees drawing wax, making stores bringing in pollen and polishing cells but queen not seen yet and no eggs or brood. They do seem busy and happy though.

The other colony was made up from a friends swarmed but still large colony on Easter Monday. It was made up with 2 frames of brood two queen cells one capped, 2 of food and 2 of foundation a . This is now in a national brood box. (The cast needed a home!) The two cells brought in were ignored/never developed an they made a good big queen cell slap bang in the middle of a sheet of foundation plus a couple of small ones which I removed. The queen emerged and I saw her. However due to bad luck/ineptitude I think this colony is now queenless .
My reasons for thinking this are:
I haven't seen the queen again, all the brood has hatched, the colony appears to be shrinking but then I guess it would at first. There are no eggs or brood except drone brood - some open so coming from somewhere and there are a lot of drones. Although there are only 2 frames of bees they seem quite stroppy compared with how they initially were.

It seems to me that this is a queenless colony gone to drone laying workers or another possibility is that I have drone laying queen. Is there a way of telling without seeing the queen? I know I would have to find her and remove in order to requeen or unite.

My plan was to have two colonies to go into winter with but happy to unite these into one for my first year if that will get me through the problem.

Any suggestions about what my next steps should be?

Any advice or suggestions would be gratefully received.
 
Dates are far more useful than 'days'. I can usually do simple maths but there are only a couple, or so, of days in the year that I easily relate to dates (Christmas Day and New Years Day).

You have two choices, unless you wish to import queen(s).

Wait or unite. Uniting would require any unwanted queen to be removed first and is not a good idea if there is a virgin queen awaiting mating. So waiting is what I would do in your shoes.

The cast is more likely to provideca positive outcome.
 
With laying workers, you would typically see a few dozen eggs, larvae and sealed cells scattered around. Eggs are often placed on the side walls of the cell rather than at the end, and you often see several eggs in a single cell.

With a drone laying queen, you typically see swathes of hundreds of eggs grouped together, hundreds of larvae grouped together and hundreds of sealed cells grouped together.

In both cases, the sealed cells are usually in normal worker-size cells, but with very pronounced domed cappings.
 
Thank you both for your helpful replies.

I suspect drone laying workers, as the pattern is much closer to that which Travelator describes.

So my proposed course of action is to tip ALL the bees out at a distance - bring the hive back to its original site.

Can I unite with the nuc colony in a single action here? IE put the nuc into a brood box and put on top of the DLW colony with paper between them. Would this work? I've moved them next to each other in small steps and have a spare brood box but no spare roof or floor( yet!).
 
Thanks - I'll give it a go!
 
Thank you both for your helpful replies.

I suspect drone laying workers, as the pattern is much closer to that which Travelator describes.

So my proposed course of action is to tip ALL the bees out at a distance - bring the hive back to its original site.

Can I unite with the nuc colony in a single action here? IE put the nuc into a brood box and put on top of the DLW colony with paper between them. Would this work? I've moved them next to each other in small steps and have a spare brood box but no spare roof or floor( yet!).

Hi Curley,
A safer option if laying workers, would to smoke them, get them to swallow up as much honey as possible, then bring them down the garden & dump out of hive. They will fly back to where the hive was. No hive there, they will beg into the nearest one. They will be more excepted once full of honey. Any laying worker won't be allowed or let in. You don't need to unite or risk your other queen being killed. I had laying workers last year & this is what I did.
Sharon


Love Beekeeping <3
 
Mmmmm, I don't think laying workers can fly which is why the dumping 100ft method works, not that they are turned away.
 
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