Drone cell questions

[Hayseed]

Two situations:
1) one of my hives is LOADED with drone cells - about 50% of all capped brood. The girls have made drone cells just about everywhere imaginable and even have torn down some established drawn comb to make room. What's this all about? Still have eggs and new larva present.

2) my friends hive seems to be dying out. Very few bees. No queen (that we can find). the ONLY capped cells ar drone cells. Not a single female apped cell. No eggs. No larva. Were these drone cells the result of an infertile queen or a laying worker?

Thanx,

Dale

[power napper]

what kind of foundation was available to the queen? If it was drawn comb from a brood nest of drawn comb from a honey super makes a lot of difference, I made a mistake and put a honey super on for a brood super and when i checked it was full of capped drone cells due to the larger cells. If you give the queen drone cells she will lay all drones.

[Hayseed]

Nothing like that. In my hive,(#1 above) where they are making lots of drone cells, the colony is much the same as it was last year. It was one of my most productive colonies with nice straight combs.

This hive is heavily populated and I plan to split it this week. Should I try to remove and destroy all the screwy comb and most of the drone brood at that time?

Dale

[ScadsOBees]

1). Are there capped worker cells present? Eggs and larvae only indicate that there is something laying. I don't think there is any way to tell what sex the eggs and larvae are until just before capping. If you don't have capped worker cells, then you have a problem. Requeen.

2)If there aren't any eggs or larvae, the queen is gone somehow. I think laying workers would keep going. Try giving them a frame of eggs and larvae if you want to save them. If there are too few bees then don't bother, make a split, use the comb and shake the old bees out.

You can try to cut the drone brood out if your foundation lets you, but if they are creating drone comb they will probably just create more drone comb. Or you can try moving it to the outside where hopefully they will fill it with honey. Or melt it down and start over.

[Michael Bush]

>1) one of my hives is LOADED with drone cells - about 50% of all capped brood. The girls have made drone cells just about everywhere imaginable and even have torn down some established drawn comb to make room. What's this all about? Still have eggs and new larva present.

If it continues, I'd get a new queen.

>2) my friends hive seems to be dying out. Very few bees. No queen (that we can find). the ONLY capped cells ar drone cells. Not a single female apped cell. No eggs. No larva. Were these drone cells the result of an infertile queen or a laying worker?

If you don't see any eggs at all (especially no multiples) it sounds like the queen has failed, but if she's still there I'd expect to see drone larvae and eggs.

I'd probably try requeening. But the best test to see if requeening will work is to give a frame with some worker eggs on it and see if they build a queen cell. If they do, they want a queen and giving them one is a good course of action. If they don't, then you need to resolve why. Either the old queen is still there or there is a laying worker or queen cells.