Multiple eggs per cell in a Queenright colony

[HoneyBeeGood]

I just inspected a very docile colony headed up by a Queen that emerged in March this year. That's pretty early for England. Today I saw a large area, right in the middle of the brood nest, where almost every cell had multiple eggs. I saw cells with up to four eggs in them.

This Queen has struggled to expand the brood nest. It hasn't grown in the last six weeks and still occupies five frames and only small portions of some of those. Except for the one side of this one frame, the rest of the cells with eggs looked normal. The open larvae looked normal. Most of the capped brood looked normal also, however I did see a few cells where the workers had uncapped dead pupae at the purple eye stage or later.

The Queen was certainly still present. I found her wondering around on one frame.

I saw these same symptoms in a small colony two years ago. That colony eventually died out.

Has anyone had experience with these symptoms? Is there a known cause?

[AstroBee]

I saw a similar thing in my OB hive where the population was too small to expand the brood nest. The queen, who was a proven layer, was intent on laying and was compelled to lay multiple eggs per cell in a small region of one frame. To solve the problem, I gave them a frame of emerging brood that quickly increased the population which allowed her to expand the brood nest. No more multiple eggs. Not sure what relevance this may have to your situation, other than it may be more common than we think. Perhaps try boosting the hive with some emerging brood.

[dickm]

It is a sign of a healthy queen that doesn't have enough room to lay/

Dickm

[peggjam]

I have hives that have two or more eggs in the cells, and are queenright. I think it is more common than one might expect. When grafting I find some cells that have more than one larva in it. DickM is proably right on, and you need to open the broodnest alittle, even if it's just putting in an empty frame every week for awhile.:)

[HoneyBeeGood]

Well, live and learn. Thanks to all of you who have answered. As I had only seen this condition once before in a failing colony, I assumed it meant a defective Queen and killed her.

Which illustrates a point that Beekeeping teaches me over and over, but which I still too often ignore, don't do anything that you can't reverse unless you're really sure of it.

Thanks again.

[Michael Bush]

The bees are restricting the brood nest, perhaps because they can't manage a larger one.

As Dickm said:
"It is a sign of a healthy queen that doesn't have enough room to lay"