Laying Worker

[rwurster]

Recently (the last 2 weeks) I rolled 2 queens, the first hive made 2 supersedure cells. The second hive still has a bit of capped brood but all new brood is drones, not to mention I have seen 3 to 12 eggs in a cell so I need to get rid of a laying worker. All the books I have say to take the hive and shake all the bees off the frames a distance away which is what I plan on doing. The question I have about this is introducing another queen and or brood into the hive. It would seem to make sense to have a queen ready if I were to do this but I don't have one ready and I'm not taking one of the 2 supersedure cells out of my other hive to do this. The part of this that bothers me is introducing another frame of eggs/larvae/capped brood into the hive without nurse bees to keep them warm. Will the foragers take over the nurse bees duties with the eggs and make another queen? What's the best way to get a queen started once I shake all the bees off the existing frames?

[robherc]

Disclaimer: This post is based purely on what I've read, as I haven't had to deal with this problem first-hand yet.

Anywise, according to the massive majority of my reading, foraging bees can return to nursing duties, if the hive requires it. That said, you do have drone brood, if any of that is open brood, then you already have at least SOME nurse bees. My recommendation would be: shakeout or no shakeout, add a frame of eggs/open brood (and you can add the attached nurse bees with it, if you want) once a week until you see them making emergency cells out of the brood; then they should accept the queen that they made from the brood without issue (I believe the pheromones released form the open brood are supposed to interfere with the laying workers ovarioles, stopping them from laying and making them more willing to accept a queen).

[Joseph Clemens]

There is no, "laying worker", it's actually "laying workers". There are always some workers that have partially developed ovaries in almost every hive. And too, they can only lay unfertilized eggs, eggs that will grow into drones. When a hive is queenright and functioning normally, the nurse bees automatically remove any eggs laid by workers, hence, once they are regularly exposed to normal brood pheromones, the normal brood nest functioning is restored and the bees will again accept and raise themselves a true queen and also remove worker eggs from brood cells.

[Jeff G]

Another option is to remove the hive and shake the bees and let them return to the other hive. When you get that one queen right then you can do a split. Thats assuming your other hive is in close proxsimity to the laying worker hive. I have done this twice but the receiving hive was queen right already. With queen cells I am not sure.

Laying worker hives are tough to get turned around in my experience, and by the time you do there arn't many bees left. If you just shake them and they return to the original hive there is a good chance the laying worker will come back also. This only works if the laying worker has never been out of the hive and doesn't know where to come back to. And in your situation unless you can get some fresh open brood for them to make a new queen; whats the point?

Even if you had a new queen in a cage and tried to introduce her after you shook the bees and there is a laying worker in there it would be like trying to introduce a queen into a hive that already has a queen.

[ycitybz]

Just take the frames with bees 60 feet or so from hive, shake off all bees onto ground. The bees without laying worker will return to original hive. The laying worker will be unable to fly back. Re-queen and you'll be off again..

[Oldtimer]

The two weeks ago you killed the laying queen, is not enough time for laying workers to develop, so something isn't quite right. Also, you don't say if the drone brood is in drone cells or in worker cells. If it's in drone cells, no issues.

However, you report 3-12 eggs per cell, mostly a sign that somehow, you have ended up with laying workers. If that is the case, you cannot introduce a new queen, hives with laying workers will always kill an introduced laying queen.

Shaking out a laying worker hive is often recommended but it's a risky procedure because you can never really guarantee the laying workers will not return to the hive, or what they may do at other hives they may enter. The best method is put a frame of young unsealed brood in the hive. A week later check it to see if they have raised queen cells. They probably won't because of the laying workers but sometimes they do. If no queen cells put in another comb of young larvae and check in another week. By this time the brood pheremones may have repressed the laying workers and the bees may have built queen cells, but if not, put another frame of young brood in. In another week, the laying workers will be repressed and there should be queen cells. The queen cells tell you the bees now regard themselves as queenless, so you can either introduce a new queen (after killing the queen cells), or leave the cells to hatch and there is around a 75% chance one of them will mate successfully and take over as the new queen.

[rwurster]

I checked my notes and it had been over a month before I inspected the hive, my mistake. I was looking at the notes for the other hive that I had to cut out and had accidentally rolled the queen (the supersedure cells had me preoccupied). All the brood is drone cells which is what caught my attention. I did introduce 2 frames of brood in hopes they would rear another queen. I'm not sure if it will work, I'll try it for another 2 weeks or so.

After talking to another beekeeper in the area, I was seriously just considering shaking all the bees off the frames and out of the hive and dispersing the existing frames of stores and drones between my other hives then doing a split later. My carnis are doing a massive build up right now so giving up a few frames of brood is no problem and honestly shaking the whole hive out isn't much of a setback either. I do want to see this problem through to its conclusion though (hopefully with a new queen) and think that the option of adding brood for 3 weeks is how I'll approach the problem every time it occurs and if no queen is made the shake out will be the end game strategy. I must say though that before this happened I thought the queen's pheromones was what suppressed laying workers from developing and just recently discovered that it's the brood's pheromones that suppresses them from developing, and that there's a few laying workers in every hive naturally, both of which are interesting things I did not know.

Anyway thanks for the advice.

[Oldtimer]

Yes, there's a lot of interesting stuff around laying workers, and how to deal with that. It's at the higher knowledge required level, yet once it's understood, it's fairly routine to deal with.

As an aside, to me, there is a drawback in putting brood in till they raise cells and letting one of the cells become the new queen. The problem is how long it takes. By the time the hive shows laying workers, it's already been queenless for quite a while. Then, you spend up to 3 weeks feeding brood in, then once they start building queen cells it's a month till you have a laying queen, and there is only a 75% chance she will mate successfully. All up that's long enough for a strong hive to turn into a weak one. To me, it's better soon as you see queen cells being built, to kill them and introduce a laying queen. Or, the bees can be given to other hives that need a boost.

[jmgi]

I was just wondering how this would work, what if you put the laying worker hive over a strong queenright hive using a double screen or screening off the inner cover hole so the bees can't get through to each other, and give the laying worker hive its own top entrance. Then in 3-4 days united them with newspaper. I'm thinking the brood pheromones from down below would have an effect on the laying worker hive, and by the time you unite them they would accept the queen from below and suppress the laying workers. I've never done this, but might it work? John

[Oldtimer]

Long as the laying worker hive is weaker than the queenright hive, you simply take the lid off the queenright hive, put a queen excluder on top, then put the laying worker hive straight on top, no newspaper or other entrance required. Almost always works, the bees in the strong hive protect their queen. It's as foolproof as any other method.

The purpose of the queen excluder is to stop the good queen from below, wandering up and accidentally finding herself in the middle of the other bees which then may kill her. You leave the hive like this for 3 weeks then remove the excluder and shuffle the combs around to whatever configuration you want.

[rwurster]

Still have a laying worker as of last week, no queen cells produced. The two frames I introduced have supplemented the existing bees a bit but I can tell the hive is dwindling. I added 2 more frames of eggs/larvae/capped a few days ago and won't inspect for five more days. A third week of this is going to tap all my resources and I'm not sure about weakening any of the other 7 hives to try to save this single hive. I don't run queen excluders or even own one or I would just do a combine as described above because my other hives are booming and this one is slowly dwindling. Anyway we'll see, but if nothing happens after week 3 I'm just going to shake the whole hive out.