Happily queenless

[Erichalfbee]

Nonsense, nurse bees orientate early on in their lives - where do you think they defecate?
You are looking at a colony that has been hopelessly queenless for some time so all bees will be long past 'nurse bee' status anyway, notwithstanding that, colonies, even queenright ones always have workers of all ages that lay, it's just that due to being Q+ the workers police it and ensure the eggs are cleared.
And let's put another myth to bed as we're at it - laying workers don't magically turn into queens, the other workers don't think they are queens, and they are wholly capable of flying any distance
I honestly don't know where these fables come from

Perhaps because some people think they churn out eggs like queens do and become heavy with them. The oft posted pictures of 20 eggs in one cell are described as being laid by one worker bee turned layer. Whereas in fact one bee lays an egg and another comes along and lays on top and so on.

 

[The Poot in Somerset]

Perhaps because some people think they churn out eggs like queens do and become heavy with them. The oft posted pictures of 20 eggs in one cell are described as being laid by one worker bee turned layer. Whereas in fact one bee lays an egg and another comes along and lays on top and so on.

It’s because there’s nothing else for them to do, so they play games. One is a competition to guess how many eggs can be laid in a single worker cell in a given time.
Apparently the record is twenty six eggs in four minutes as recorded in the Mead Book of Records.

 

[beeno]

Hi, no I don’t have a nuc of queenless laying workers, why would I keep that. I have a nuc of bees without a queen and was going to unite with a queen right nuc but one of the comments above indicated that the queenless hive may kill the queen in the queen right hive and I was concerned as to if this would potentially happen.

Unless you have killed the drone laying queen she will be back in the hive again with the others.

 

[Chantereine105]

You have enough space with 30 yards. You remove the hive shaken out to prevent return.
The advice given by the wise old sages on here are to shake into long grass or shrubbery and basically leave them to beg their way into the other hives. I have only done this once, it was manic for a while, but they sorted themselves out within an hour or so and the next morning, there was no sign that it had been done.
The very best of luck to you and welcome

Thanks for the reply and the welcome. I have gone for the shake out this morning and removed the hive, but half the bees have settled where the hive used to be and the other half have found the queen excluder that I took off and put out to clean up a few yards away, and huddled on that. I am going to go and remove that completely now, will they give up on the original site as the day goes on?
This was the remains of an aggressive hive that I left on the original site to work itself out. Definitely no queen in there but to my horror when I shook the bees off this morning there were larvae on one frame, no brood or eggs. I went through all the other frames to recheck and no sign of anything on any others. Will this be the efforts of a laying worker? Why don't they follow the rules???

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Will this be the efforts of a laying worker? Why don't they follow the rules???

Depends which rules you mean - the 'rule' which says laying workers can't return to the hive after shaking out was written by an imbecile so they are perfectly entitled to ignore it
In answer to your question - by the end of the day the now homeless bees will give up clustering on where home used to be and beg their way in somewhere else.

 

[Antipodes]

This has got me a bit worried now, I was just about to unite what I presumed was a hopelessly queenless nuc with another that has a lovely large homegrown queen with a great nature which I don’t want to loose.

The queenless nuc was shaken out after being drone laying once and they went back into the nuc where now they seem to be quite content bringing in stores, but also have cleaned up a frame or so ready for laying which is not happening.

Might these trash my other queen if I unite?

Hi Rowena,

Are you saying that after the shakeout, there are no eggs now (from a laying worker) in the queenless nuc? You've seen that on re-inspecting them a few days after the shakeout?