[Pugs]

Well, I'm not the most knowledgeable one here, but I'll try to answer both questions.

First, if a laying worker has laid eggs in the comb, when the bees emerge, they will be drone, but that does not make the comb drone comb. It is the size of the cells that make it drone comb. So, if it was worker comb to begin with, it will still be worker comb when a queen lays eggs in it. Bees will not rework drone comb to worker comb, that I've ever heard of.

Second, if a hive is queenless for a length of time, I'm not sure how long, workers can start laying eggs and become 'false' queens. They will be treated like queens by the other bees, but since they have never mated, they will only lay drone eggs. (There are exceptions to this rule, but I won't go into them.)

If there are laying workers in a hive, the bees will kill a new queen, as they think they already have one. There are different ways of dealing with the hive. To get it queenright, you can add a frame of open brood once a week for three weeks. The pheromones put off by the open brood will suppress they laying workers enough for the bees to figure out they are queenless and start a new queen. When that happens, you can let them raise a new queen, or introduce a mated queen in the usual method.

Others advice dumping the bees out of the hive 20 feet or more from the hive. Tear down the hive and give any frames of nectar/honey/pollen to other hives. Freeze the comb for 24 hours to kill the drone brood, then give those frames to other hives so the bees can clean them up and reuse them.

Still other advice shaking out the bees, and then letting them return to the hive under the assumption that the laying workers won't find their way back to the hive.

Clear as mud now? Hope this helps.

Pugs

 

[Pugs]

I should have kept my mouth shut, metaphorically speaking, no pun intended.

Here is part of what I PMed someone else who asked me that.

I'm talking about thelytoky. " ... The honey bee rendition of this is territorial incursion by Apis mellifera capensis, the native bee of the South African Cape of Good Hope, into AHB country. Unlike other honey bees, the Cape bee has a high degree of thelytoky. This is the capacity for laying workers to produce fully functional queens from unfertilized eggs. Although rare, it is present in other stocks as noted by G. DeGrandi-Hoffman and colleagues (Bee Science, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp 166-171, May 1991)."

This quote is from http://www.beesource.com/point-of-vi...honey-bee-ahb/ .

-------------------------------------------------------------- end of my quote ---------------
So, in rare cases, it is possible for a laying worker's egg to not be a drone and for the workers to raise a supersedure queen from it.

Clear as mud now?

Pugs

 

[Pugs]

jkirby -

I'm not sure if research is being done on it or not. I have read that it is consider an undesirable trait.

Pugs