Author Topic: non laying queen & laying workers?  (Read 1374 times)

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Offline rober

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non laying queen & laying workers?
« on: June 05, 2018, 03:23:15 pm »
checking hives this morning & found drone brood in a hive with a dud queen but it was in a sporadic shotgun-like pattern. if you have a non performing queen can you still  have laying workers? I caught & pickled the queen but i'm worried about the new queen being killed if this hive does indeed have laying workers. I feel like i'm posting a new thread every 10 minutes but i'm having a run on weird situations lately. i'm also toying with combining this hive with another hive that is on the weak side & has a dud queen too.

Offline apisbees

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Re: non laying queen & laying workers?
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2018, 04:53:16 pm »
It may be a good Idea, and then make a split from a hive that you can get fresh newer younger bees that will be more accepting of an introduced queen, if you want to keep the hive numbers.
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Offline rober

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Re: non laying queen & laying workers?
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2018, 06:31:41 pm »
apis-do you think it's possible that there are laying workers even though there was a queen present?

Offline apisbees

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Re: non laying queen & laying workers?
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2018, 09:03:55 pm »
There could be, I have seen it before. Look at how the eggs are deposited in the cells, are there cells with mutable eggs? Look closely for signs that the eggs are laid by the queen and not workers worker eggs should be easy to spot by where they are in the cells.
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Offline rober

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Re: non laying queen & laying workers?
« Reply #4 on: June 06, 2018, 05:02:43 pm »
today I found a few worker cells & a sealed queen cell in this hive. the drone cells were not as sporadic as I thought & I found no signs of multiple eggs so I believe that there are no laying workers. I re-queened a hive with a poor performing queen at another yard & put that queen ( caged ) in this hive after removing the queen cell. time will tell. at a 3rd yard I had 2 queenless hives & 1 that was trying to swarm. I gave the queenless hives the frames with swarm cells & put a 3rd deep & 2 medium supers on the swarmy hive. that was 2 weeks ago. when I checked them this morning the swarmy hive was booming & had filled 2 medium supers with honey & the queenless hives were both queenright & ready for a 2nd deep.