Propogating Laying Workers

[George Fergusson]

Sigh. I had an experienced beekeeper- the guy I bought my hives from- look at a couple of hives today to help me assess what's going on with them. In his opinion, they've both got laying workers in a big way. Is 2 hives unusual? Not really. I split a hive that I thought was queenless (and honey bound) and did newspaper combines on 2 other hives- one of which was queenright but weak and the other I was in the process of requeening- first with a queen cell, then again with a caged queen.

Needless to say, neither hive is queenright now. The brood to me at first almost looked diseased- many drone cells, a spotty pattern, and partially capped cells and some dead larva- infertile eggs that hatched and started to grow but didn't make it. There were multiple eggs, but I hadn't seen them before.

Having had someone with infinitely more bee experience than me diagnose the situation was good- I wish I'd done it sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, finding experienced beekeepers around here and getting them to come over isn't easy- I had to help this fellow super some of his 800+ hives today to get him over smile.gif As useful as this forum is, there's nothing like hands on help sometimes. Mis-diagnosing the situation caused me to lose 2 hives, but it probably won't be the last time I do something stupid or misread the evidence. I knew something was wrong with the original hive when I got it back in mid-June but I didn't call it right. It WAS queenless AND honey bound. It was queenless when I got it and remained queenless for a month and a half.

I'll shake them both out tommorow morning and let them find new homes. On the bright side, I'm picking up a queen from a friend which I'll house in a NUC for use later.

Interesting thing about that caged queen.. she was still in the cage 6 days after I put her in the hive. A worker had crawled in to join her (the candy was largely gone) but she hadn't/wouldn't leave the cage. I released her and she crawled up my hive tool, across my hand, flew 12" straight up in the air and then dove down between the frames. I wondered at the time.. now it makes sense why she didn't leave the cage. We didn't see her today.

George-

[dickm]

Queens are a bigger problem than I think they ever were. I bet I've had 35% loss this year and they were all young queens. Carniolans. Either the new queens didn't lay, or started and quit. Others would drop offline at the drop of a hat. All introduced without attendants and with 4 days of candy. Of 10 packages with queens, 3 never became queenright.

It's an important experience. Can you now tell the difference between a failing queen and a laying worker? The multiple eggs clinches it. I suspect that somewhere along the line you didn't trust your own eyes as to whether they were queenright. Better luck in the future.

Dickm

[Michael Bush]

Probably the MOST common mistake is to assume queenlessness when there is a virgin queen. The next is to assume it's a virgin queen when it's queenless. One of the reasons for both mistakes is that the virgin is so hard to find and isn't laying eggs so the sypmtoms are identical. Assuming you've caught it before you get laying workers, of course, the solution is to put some eggs and open brood in and let the bees sort it out.

Sounds like your next mistake was to combine a hive with laying workers with a queenright hive. Sometimes this works, but I don't recommend it because the laying worker hive may kill the queen. That sounds like what happened to you. If you have a laying worker hive you need to shake it out or put some open brood in it every week for a few weeks until they make a queen. It's usually simpler and less frustrating to just shake them out.

Hopefully you've learned a lot. smile.gif

Good luck.

[Ross]

Yep, if you want to combine a laying worker hive with a queen right hive, you need to shake out the laying worker hive. Then set the queen right hive in its place. You'll get most of the field bees in the queen right hive. It is possible that you might still have a problem if the queen right hive is very weak, but I have done it with 5 frame nucs successfully.

[Ross]

Yep, if you want to combine a laying worker hive with a queen right hive, you need to shake out the laying worker hive. Then set the queen right hive in its place. You'll get most of the field bees in the queen right hive. It is possible that you might still have a problem if the queen right hive is very weak, but I have done it with 5 frame nucs successfully.

[George Fergusson]

Michael pretty much pegged it. I didn't call it right to begin with (queenless) and putzed away a lot of time freeing up brood area to see if that helped- when it didn't, I did the split/combine with 2 other hives before I knew it had laying workers. Giving it some eggs in the beginning and letting them sort it out themselves would have been the ticket, I'd have a strong hive going now instead of 2 less hives... I guess the thing I need to remember is that at the time, I had 26 other hives to attend to with nary a clue as to what I was doing. Most of them are doing fine smile.gif

So this morning we shook the 2 hives out. Pretty straight forward... they hated it. Can't say as I enjoyed it. During a break, Nancy and I were sitting off on the edge of the apiary drinking cold water and watching the show and a bee flew over and nailed me right on the end of my nose. Yeow! I got mine smile.gif

I also picked up a queen from a friend this morning and installed her in a 4-frame NUC until I've got things sorted.

A comedy of errors all around I guess and yes, I've learned a lot and having more fun than an ebola-infected barrel of monkeys smile.gif

George-

[Todd Zeiner]

I guess that's what I like about beekeeping. I can really screw up and miss something and you don't loose your shirt over it like other things. Kinda like the Indianapolis Colts, "there is always next year"

[power napper]

Like I have been told many times, "If your aren't making any mistakes, you aren't doing anything.

[George Fergusson]

"If your aren't making any mistakes, you aren't doing anything."

Sounds like the advice an old boss of mine used to give me: "Get out there and do something, even if it's wrong".

I *usually* don't make the same stupid mistake twice.

George-

[dickm]

How about: "You never learn anything by doing it right"?

Dickm

[Michael Bush]

>"If your aren't making any mistakes, you aren't doing anything."

I had a boss who used to say that. If he thought you weren't doing much he'd say "I see you guys aren't making a lot of mistakes today."

I prefer "If you aren't making mistakes you aren't learning anything."