[burns375]

I went thru my queenless cell builder today, to check caged grafts that are starting to hatch. I had two nice natural cells on comb I decided to keep, hence the caging. So I calculate that today is 18days worst case for the natural cells and figure something ain't right. The cells are still intact, nurse bees on them, liking them etc. I decided to cut them open. I found very heathly drone pupa with a load of royal jelly at the top. Im sure this is not uncommon, but most be sorta rare. Anyone ever run into this.

 

[ruthiesbees]

that might explain what happened in my hive earlier this year. Girls tried a supersedure and capped 3 queen cells. I carefully put 1 cell in each hive and waited for them to hatch. For the 2 hives in the house, I never could find a queen after the cell hatched. Already had a few drones in the mix when I added bees to take care of the cell, so I'm assuming they hatched a drone from those cells. The 3rd cell hatched in the outdoor hive, and I did find a queen in that hive, so I assume she came from the queen cell. (she never made it back from her mating flight so I ended up buying a new queen).

Michael Bush made a comment on my question a few weeks back that the bees usually tear down a drone queen cell before it hatches. But apparently it is not uncommon in the bee world.

 

[Michael Bush]

In the sequence of degeneration of a laying worker hive, I usually do see queen cells with drones in them. Also in drone laying queen hives. Huber made the same observations.

http://www.bushfarms.com/huber.htm#maleeggsinroyalcells
http://www.bushfarms.com/huber.htm#onlymaleeggs
http://www.bushfarms.com/huber.htm#impregnationaffectstheovaries

 

[burns375]

Interesting, no laying workers though. Or atleast not yet, I'll probably let one of the caged virgins go tommorow.