laying workers that re-queen themselves?

[buford]

i didn't think this was possible until my last extraction.

i use queen excluders, so when i saw drone brood in the honey supers i knew something eas wrong.

i knew i had laying workers when i saw several eggs in the uncapped cells. however, when i went out to the suspected colony, they had a normal brood pattern (one egg per cell and worker brood).

is this normal?

[Michael Bush]

>i use queen excluders, so when i saw drone brood in the honey supers i knew something eas wrong.

A failing queen that got through the excluder? A queen that just did a foray to lay some drone because the supers were where she found the comb? A queen CAN get through an excluder if she really wants to.

>i knew i had laying workers when i saw several eggs in the uncapped cells.

As in duplicate eggs? Sometimes a newly mated queen does this or a queen that has run out of space to lay.

>however, when i went out to the suspected colony, they had a normal brood pattern (one egg per cell and worker brood).

Probably the old queen got up into the supers and failed and they raised a new on. You saw where she laid a few duplicates and now she's laying. You always have to take into account that it takes 28 days from an egg to a laying queen. You often don't realize there IS a queen because you don't see eggs, or, as you saw, you see some duplicates.

>is this normal?

Sure. Now maybe the question was, "is it possible that a laying worker created a queen". Yes it's possible and not unheard of. No, it's not likely.

http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/bsmay1991.htm

[Jim Fischer]

If you have worker brood, you have a mated queen.
No way a "laying worker" is ever going to produce
worker brood. No way a laying worker is going to
even get mated.

Here's the deal - newly-mated queens take time to
"settle down" and start laying a "nice" pattern.
They can lay multiple eggs in one cell, lay drone
brood, all sorts of random stuff.

So, my conclusion is that you are the proud
owner of a 2-queen hive, or you at had one
for a time before you pulled all the honey
supers, and ejected the queen from "her" turf.

[Jim Fischer]

Oh, come on!
Thelytoky?
In Euro-honeybees?

Yes, it is possible in theory, but theory
is the same as practice only in theory,
not in practice.

Time for Mr. Occam to get out his razor... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[BjornBee]

What was the set-up in the brood chamber and the supers that were placed above the excluder? How many boxes, and were there any other equipment used? How many supers were put on at one time? Any upper entrances? There could be another possibility.

[dickm]

Apis capensis does it regularly. Also there have been "intercaste" bees documented in Apis scutellata (African bee) another relative. It's called parthenogenesis by automatic thelytoky. OK I'm showing off but I just learned this and I wanted to put those words in print. Besides, people should know all there is, even if it's rare.

Dickm

[Michael Bush]

>Oh, come on!
>Thelytoky?
>In Euro-honeybees?

I suggested a much more likely senario. But the subject is "laying workers that re-queen themselves?". What part of "no it's not likely" did you not understand? Maybe I need to explain what "not likely" means for you.

[Jim Fischer]

So, "the master of understatement rides again, it
seems.

"Not likely" would be finding a rock in
your shoe after walking through an airport.

Thelytoky would be more like finding the rock
under the same conditions, and discovering that
the rock was a 3-carat star sapphire.
In-freakin-credible.

[Michael Bush]

The question was:

"laying workers that re-queen themselves?"

I believe an accurate synopsis of my answer would be that while it is possible, there are other much more likely explanations and it is unlikely though not unheard of. There are actually several documented cases dating back some time.

Since you also think it unlikely, what part of that answer did you disagree with, Jim?

Someone wins a big lottery quite often. To say they don't would be inaccurate. To imply that you're likely to win when you buy a ticket would be dishonest.

I didn't intend to imply that there was any likelyhood of Thelytoky, only that the answer to the question is that it has happened and been observed but that it is very unlikely that was what happened, especially since the odds are low and there are other much more likely explanations.

Since you seem to agree while at the same time seem to be arguing with me, I still have trouble understanding what you don't like about my original answer.

So let's try dividing the question up and YOU answer it.

1) Can laying workers ever re-queen themselves? (Roughly the title of this post)
2) What do you think happened (assuming the above lengthy scenerio)

[Michael Bush]

I have reread this and I think I now have it, Jim. Apparently you were offended that I used the nonspecific generic form "unlikely" when I should have used the numericaly specific and much more scientifically accurate term that the likelyhood of it happening was "In-freakin-credible."

Thank you for pointing out my error. Yes, I agree with Jim. The likelyhood of Thelytoky being the correct explainaion (which by the way Jim would not require the laying worker to mate) would be "In-freakin-credible" rather than merely "unlikely."

[Robert Hawkins]

Thanks Mr. Bush. I read the link ref. Thelytoky and think it might be a gene worth keeping. Should this be another thread?

Hawk

[Michael Bush]

>Should this be another thread?

Basically, common terms, it's in the title of this one. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[buford]

here's a little more info on this colony.

ALL of the capped brood in the honey super was drone brood (no worker brood at all), the average uncapped cell had about eleven eggs in it.

i think if any re-queening happened it must have happened down-stairs (but i could be wrong). it's just that i've always heard that laying workers aren't worth anything (can't re-queen them, shake them off somewhere and leave 'em be, etc.).

obviously i don't know much.

[Michael Bush]

I can't say you'll ever know for sure what happened. As unlikely as Thelytoky is as an explaination, really no one knows how often it happens since it's difficult to tell when it has. But attempts to cause it to happen usually fail. So I'm not saying it couldn't be. I just think it unlikely enough that I would be looking for other explanations.

Maybe somehow you ended up with a laying worker in one part of the hive during a period when they were raising a new queen in another part of the hive. Since the new queen didn't show up where the evidence of the laying worker was, it actually seems to show that the queen DIDN'T come from the laying worker.

[BjornBee]

In the demerie method of queen production, isolating the new eggs above a box or two will start the bees making queen cells. This is accomplished by seperating the main brood chambers and the box with eggs by a couple of honey supers or empty boxes and could be aided by an excluder. A sudden decrease of pheromones triggers this impulse.

It is possible that the seperation of bees with the addition of supers and possible an excluder, that the bees upstairs started raising thier own brood. This could be helped with the use of excluders, and the use of an upper entrance. It may also suggest that the queen downstairs is not releasing alot of pheromones. In any case I do not think it was a virgin queen. More likely the work of a laying worker.

Could you possibly of trapped a virgin queen upstairs, above the excluder with no way to mate. And therefore a drone layer? An unmated queen can lay irregular/multiple for this very reason. I'm guessing a laying worker. In any case....its......here it comes.....un-freakin-believable! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[BULLSEYE BILL]

>>Should this be another thread?

So. Mike, did you get to meet your 'buddy', the 'Master Fabricator' at HAS? Just wondering if you went out partying...

[peggjam]

If the bees upstairs had even one egg close to the right age they would've started a queen cell, and not produced a laying worker. Laying workers, while they do exsist, are rare, and would require a lengthy asbesence of the queen to even start laying. I have a nuc that contained one queen cell for 2-3 weeks without hatching. I finally opened it up, and the larva had died long since, yet the presence of this one queen cell kept the workers from laying. MB's explainaion seems to be more plusiable than anything else.

peggjam

[Jim Fischer]

> ...much more scientifically accurate term that
> the likelyhood of it happening was
> "In-freakin-credible."

Yes, the use of proper terminology reflecting the
appropriate statistical probability does much to
improve the scientific rigor of the statement,
and hence, enhance the level of the discussion.

The appropriate way to describe a confirmed
finding of Thelytoky in EHB would be (said
slowly, and with gravity):

Double U Tee Eff?!?

[Mabe]

Young man..was that an expletive?

[Michael Bush]

>So. Mike, did you get to meet your 'buddy', the 'Master Fabricator' at HAS?

I think I met everyone who was there. [img]smile.gif[/img]

>Just wondering if you went out partying...

Well, since I don't drink, I guess I'm not really a party kind of guy. I'd rather sit around and talk about bees. [img]smile.gif[/img]