Drone Layer or Laying Workers

[Sungold]

I have had a rather strong colony go 95% drone brood on me.(interesting- seems as if a small % might be worker brood). This is a double deep colony w/2 honey supers (1 filled, the other partial). Everything seemed fine. In fact, I thought that I would take a couple of frames out to make up a split. When I got down to the brood chamber t had very little brood (both open and sealed), 95% of which was drone? I tried to look for the queen (talk about a needle in a hay stack). I did not find her. These 20 frames are just covered real thick with bees (80%workers/20%drone). So, here are my question(s).

1. Can a good queen all of the sudden become a drone layer?

2. If this has become a laying worker colony what should I do? (If it were smaller I would shake it out and re-queen,no problem. This is a big dog colony, shake all those bees out just the same?)

3. Should I just take the honey, split the two deeps and put the deeps on 2 other colonies in a different yard? (recombine and requeen later in the fall?)

Help!

[tecumseh]

1. Yes

2. With 80% drones what are you losing by dumbing the whole mess on the ground.

3. Sounds like an acceptable plan...

But first check this hive for mites. The sudden failure of a booming hive has the smell of 'mite problem' written all over it.

[honeyman46408]

I had one like that once, I shook them out on the ground (100 yards from the hive) and requeened them next day I noticed a small clump of bees where I shook them, I put a nuc with a frame of comb there and they marched in and upon inspection I found a queen but they never did much of a build up=just another experance from another BK Good Luck!

[Michael Bush]

I have about the same answers.

>1. Can a good queen all of the sudden become a drone layer?

Yes. The queen runs out of sperm and that's it.

>2. If this has become a laying worker colony what should I do? (If it were smaller I would shake it out and re-queen,no problem. This is a big dog colony, shake all those bees out just the same?)

Yes, but they are mostly drones. smile.gif

>3. Should I just take the honey, split the two deeps and put the deeps on 2 other colonies in a different yard? (recombine and requeen later in the fall?)

I'd probably call it a loss. But then sometimes you find the bees have raised a supercedure queen and she's running around in there and it recovers on it's own. But it's probably a waste to leave it with all those drones it and may be queenless or a drone layer still.

A shakeout is probably the safest solution since you don't want the drone layer or a laying worker to survive the combine.