Laying worker?

[HelenHP16]

Hello, I would greatly appreciate some advice about what to do with one of my hives.

The hive contains a swarm from my original colony and last years queen. They have been doing really well and inspecting them today I saw HM and there were 3 frames of good looking brood and cells with single eggs. All was looking great until I got to the last frame which I was expecting to be just stores but no.... Closer inspection showed a fair number of cells with multiple eggs.

So is this a laying worker and can this happen whilst there is a queen that seems to be getting on with her business? Can a queen start to do this and should I look at re-queening. Ted Hooper suggests dumping all the bees outside the hive and letting them sort themselves out but that seems a bit extreme.

Many thanks

Helen

 

[Midland Beek]

There is nowt wrong with your queen or your colony. Multiple eggs is kind of saying to you: Get some egg-laying space into that hive.

In your short time as a beekeeper you really should have worked out that a single National box as a brooding area is too small. You need two deep boxes under your queen excluder for National to work.

 

[MuswellMetro]

Very unlikely to be DLW as you only normally get DLW after all the brood has emerged because in addition to the queen pheromones the brood pheromones suppress the workers ovararies , i suspect it is just HM is running out of space to lay

 

[HelenHP16]

Very unlikely to be DLW as you only normally get DLW after all the brood has emerged because in addition to the queen pheromones the brood pheromones suppress the workers ovararies , i suspect it is just HM is running out of space to lay

Thank you

There are frames of undrawn foundation in there but they are not quick at drawing them out. I did move one frame of drawn comb in there so hopefully that will help.

 

[user 6228]

Very unlikely to be DLW as you only normally get DLW after all the brood has emerged because in addition to the queen pheromones the brood pheromones suppress the workers ovararies

As a general guide yes but not all of them. and then some of the other workers clear up the worker eggs... Oh why cant bees be simple? .You can even find the occasional capped drone in the super above the QE