Why were the first batch laid drones?
I just checked a nuc I started with a virgin queen. Last week I posted that I had a bad queen. It turns out to be just the oppisite. She is now laying a very good worker pattern.
Why were her first batch of bees capped drones, I thought she was bad and was gonna pinch her, but now she is diong great. I guess she just needed time. but everyone said she was bad. Glad I didn't kill her and gave her time
If it isn't broken, don't try to fix it. If you build it, they will fill it.
laying workers
some times if something just don't go wright with the queen and her mating in a timely manner the workers will start to lay a few eggs before the virgin's starts to lay. It not that the Queen didn't lay the wright eggs in the cells. I have seen this a few times when the queen cell I put in a mating nuc didn't turn out and they raised an emergency queen and this caused the workers to start laying usually a few days just before the queen did.
the colony will always try to maintain a certain % of drones in the colony. Perhaps you were low...? Just a thought...
Let's BEE friends
Perhaps there were a few laying workers, doing their thing, until the queen got busy herself.
Joseph Clemens -- Website
They were bigger targets, until she got the hang of it
I thought the hive wouldn't accept a queen in a hive with laying workers...
In nature, few things are absolute. I give queen cells to queenless laying worker colonies, once in awhile, sometimes they take. There are laying workers in just about all hives, queenright or queenless. They're only problems when they develop to the point that most of the workers treat the laying workers as their queen.Originally Posted by Phaedrus
I have a frame with about a half dozen ripe queen cells, that I inserted into a colony with laying workers. I'm waiting for them to emerge, then I can see if the colony will accept one of them to replace the laying workers as their primary source of eggs.
Last edited by Joseph Clemens; 07-06-2008 at 08:21 PM.
Joseph Clemens -- Website
This first batch of capped drones was not laid by workers. I don't think so, The pattern was round about the size of a baseball. I'm almost positive it was the queen that laid them.
Laying workers will not have a good round pattern like that , would they?
If it isn't broken, don't try to fix it. If you build it, they will fill it.
I've seen virgin queens do this.
Maybe the queen is practicing.
Maybe it's a way of nature to spread her genepool in the area right away, the drones have no fathers and are a genetic copy of her. (This is what I think is happening.)
Did you have dronecomb in the hive? It happens alot here if I do, so I remove my dronecombs in mating boxes.
Can I just say one part of getting into beekeeping that I didn't expect, but am pleased to find is all the potential comedy material. Not to threadjack, but it had to be said...They were bigger targets, until she got the hang of it
Oh, the swarm catching stories are the best! If you live to tell them...
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