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I posted this thread, here, because uncontrolled laying workers can be like an internal parasite of honey bee colonies.
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In the past forty-eight years, I've seen queenless colonies develop problems with laying workers, many more times than I wish to remember. I've also read extensively on the subject, trying to get the best grasp of the situation that I could.
Unfortunately I never thought up a simple and effective solution to laying worker problems, like Michael Bush's method of straightening them out - primarily by providing them a donated frame of open worker brood with some eggs to them, each week, for three or four weeks, then, once they begin to raise themselves a queen of their own, they're "cured", and back on track. Thank you, Michael Bush.
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Now that I've been raising queens/bees with the Cordovan Italian color trait, for quite some time, I've discovered something about laying workers that I might never have realized without raising so many Cordovan Italian queens and bees.
First, Cordovan Italian queen honey bees, that exhibit the Cordovan color trait, are virtually incapable of directly producing drones that are normal colored. All the unfertilized (haploid) eggs that they lay will never contain a gene for normal color, since they don't have one themselves, to contribute. So, now that I have many colonies headed by Cordovan Italian queens, it has become obvious that many drones, of normal color, which are produced in these colonies (not determined by the drones mere presence <because drones wander>, but from watching them emerge from their cells).
My hypothesis is that some of the normal colored workers in these colonies, having been fathered by a normal colored drone, their Cordovan mother had mated with, being developed as laying workers, laid some of their eggs into drone cells, where the normal policing of nurse bees, doesn't happen, and that drone eggs laid by laying workers, in drone cells, is raised as if they were laid by the queen. It seems plausible, this gives laying workers a more positive and genetically viable purpose to their existence. Increasing the distribution of diverse genetics in populations of honey bee colonies, everywhere.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
In the past forty-eight years, I've seen queenless colonies develop problems with laying workers, many more times than I wish to remember. I've also read extensively on the subject, trying to get the best grasp of the situation that I could.
Unfortunately I never thought up a simple and effective solution to laying worker problems, like Michael Bush's method of straightening them out - primarily by providing them a donated frame of open worker brood with some eggs to them, each week, for three or four weeks, then, once they begin to raise themselves a queen of their own, they're "cured", and back on track. Thank you, Michael Bush.
v v v v v v v v
Now that I've been raising queens/bees with the Cordovan Italian color trait, for quite some time, I've discovered something about laying workers that I might never have realized without raising so many Cordovan Italian queens and bees.
First, Cordovan Italian queen honey bees, that exhibit the Cordovan color trait, are virtually incapable of directly producing drones that are normal colored. All the unfertilized (haploid) eggs that they lay will never contain a gene for normal color, since they don't have one themselves, to contribute. So, now that I have many colonies headed by Cordovan Italian queens, it has become obvious that many drones, of normal color, which are produced in these colonies (not determined by the drones mere presence <because drones wander>, but from watching them emerge from their cells).
My hypothesis is that some of the normal colored workers in these colonies, having been fathered by a normal colored drone, their Cordovan mother had mated with, being developed as laying workers, laid some of their eggs into drone cells, where the normal policing of nurse bees, doesn't happen, and that drone eggs laid by laying workers, in drone cells, is raised as if they were laid by the queen. It seems plausible, this gives laying workers a more positive and genetically viable purpose to their existence. Increasing the distribution of diverse genetics in populations of honey bee colonies, everywhere.
