Rejected eggs

[BeeKeyPlayer]

A colony with a new laying queen is rejecting her eggs. This has been going on for a few weeks now. There are always some eggs visible and never any larvae. Do the workers eject (or eat) them because they are not fertilised? I've not seen this before but I guess I'll have to remove the queen and unite the colony.

Thoughts?

 

[Curly green finger's]

A colony with a new laying queen is rejecting her eggs. This has been going on for a few weeks now. There are always some eggs visible and never any larvae. Do the workers eject (or eat) them because they are not fertilised? I've not seen this before but I guess I'll have to remove the queen and unite the colony.

Thoughts?

When you say laying queen bought in mated or one the colony have replaced?

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

Neither - she's one I raised in a mini nuc. I usually leave them in the mini nucs till they have been laying for a while but (who knows?) perhaps I removed this one after I saw eggs.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Thoughts?

Are there pollen stores?

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

I didn't think of that. Sometimes there's far too much. I'll check soon.

 

[Antipodes]

A colony with a new laying queen is rejecting her eggs. This has been going on for a few weeks now. There are always some eggs visible and never any larvae. Do the workers eject (or eat) them because they are not fertilised? I've not seen this before but I guess I'll have to remove the queen and unite the colony.

Thoughts?

Are you feeding them?

 

[Curly green finger's]

Neither - she's one I raised in a mini nuc. I usually leave them in the mini nucs till they have been laying for a while but (who knows?) perhaps I removed this one after I saw eggs.

Like Dani said which was also my thoughts about stores ( pollen ) what was the capped brood pattern like in the mini nuc ? It must of been ok for you to use her.

 

[Anduril]

As above sounds like cannibalisation of a desperate colony.

 

[madasafish]

Bees will eat eggs when starving.

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

I looked at this colony (with the queen whose eggs are removed by the workers) today. There's plenty honey and pollen - and a couple of frames well laid up with eggs. No larvae, and I don't expect after all this time that's there ever will be.

It looks like I got it wrong and took this queen out of the mini nuc (and clipped and marked her) without any evidence she was properly mated. I usually wait till I see sealed brood but perhaps I had moved a frame of brood into that nuc to boost numbers - and then lost track of things.

Here she is today. Tomorrow she'll have to go when I unite with another colony.



In fact the colony I'll be using consists of the four frames from my observation hive, now in a nuc box. The observation hive didn't didn't end up so well this year. After a blistering start, I had to remove three of the four frames of brood and replaced them with foundation. There were so many bees that the frames were fully drawn within a couple of days. But the queen never laid in them so I gave up and dismantled the colony and put it in a nuc. Now the queen is back to normal and these frames which were so unacceptable in the observation hive are perfectly fine in the nuc box. These bees (from the observation hive, not in the photo above) are the blackest I've seen - in other words very, very dark brown - but I've never been able to draw any meaningful conclusions that the colour of my bees says anything else about them than their colour.