Laying workers what to do...(long post)

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tedandagnes

New Bee
Joined
Sep 7, 2010
Messages
7
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Location
Yorkshire Dales
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
1
hi there very new beekeeper here & would be very grateful for some advice.

Got Nuc of bees at end of June from thornes was told was this years queen but she was marked with white dot & had a clipped wing, other 5 nucs in the group weren't marked or clipped.

Seemed to be going along swimmingly excellent laying pattern but created a supersedure cell late july so decided to leave them be & let them get on with it

That hatched & a few other cells made so we left them to it again.

Hive swarmed & caught installed in nuc, has continued laying, they are okay.

There were 8 Q cells left in the main hive, we removed 4 into 2 seperate nucs & 1 was grafted onto someone elses hive left the rest in mine.

Hive swarmed again week later, caught & hived, within a week they had pulled & filled at least 5 frames of stores (have been feeding them 2:1 syrup) but no sign of any eggs/brood

So again left them all to it & hope the new queens would get going.

1 nuc failed (robbed we think) still no sign of either queen laying so put a test frame with small amount of brood/lavae (no eggs sadly) into cast swarm hive.

Have just checked that frame and area around the brood has cells with 2/3 eggs on side nr top so i guess laying workers....what to do now

Thanks for ploughing through this far...would be grateful for some advice

Rachelle
Beekeeper for 4mths & hasn't got a clue:D
 
First lesson learned is never leave more than one queen cell in a colony otherwise you risk the chance of further swarming, as you have discovered.

Two or three eggs in a cells with a new queen is not unusual, she is still getting the hang of the job. I suspect this is all it is. A good sign, but not definitive, is if the eggs are at the bottom of the cell.

You don't show timescales but laying workers usually taking some time to get going. If you do have laying workers in a colony at this time of year then simply leave them to it. They will be dead soon. There is nothing else to be done now I fear.

Hopefully, there is a new queen in there so feed them and cross all fingers.
 
1st swarm issued on 12th Aug

2nd swarm - 21st Aug

Unfortunately the eggs wers around the top & sides which makes me think laying workers.
 

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