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210 Posts
Hey all,
Need some help figuring out next move. I have a 2nd season hive that wintered great but swarmed last month. I have another wintered hive that's doing great and 2 rapidly growing queenright nucs. I requeened the swarmed hive with a mated queen. Took her a while to start laying, and when she did I noted several multi-egg cells. But given the many single-egg cells I racked it up to young queen learning the ropes of laying.
Today I inspected and was surprised to see LOADS of capped drone brood. There is some worker brood but I'd say 90% is drone. I found the queen (she's marked so it's definitely the original introduced mated queen). There are also a few supercedure cells- one capped.
So I'm thinking the possibilities are that I've either got a laying worker OR a poorly mated queen who's mostly laying drones. I remember reading that laying workers will usually kill an introduced queen?
-Do they even co-exist with a queen?
My options at this point, as I see it:
1) let nature take its course- if they're raising a queen from one for the few fertilized eggs then great. (Would they ever try to raise a queen cell from drone larva?)
2) smush existing queen and queen cells and swap in a proven laying queen from one of the nucs. But- if there is a laying worker, would I be back to square one if laying workers can co-exist with queen?
Here's a few pics of some brood frames.
Thanks for any input.
Brad
Need some help figuring out next move. I have a 2nd season hive that wintered great but swarmed last month. I have another wintered hive that's doing great and 2 rapidly growing queenright nucs. I requeened the swarmed hive with a mated queen. Took her a while to start laying, and when she did I noted several multi-egg cells. But given the many single-egg cells I racked it up to young queen learning the ropes of laying.
Today I inspected and was surprised to see LOADS of capped drone brood. There is some worker brood but I'd say 90% is drone. I found the queen (she's marked so it's definitely the original introduced mated queen). There are also a few supercedure cells- one capped.
So I'm thinking the possibilities are that I've either got a laying worker OR a poorly mated queen who's mostly laying drones. I remember reading that laying workers will usually kill an introduced queen?
-Do they even co-exist with a queen?
My options at this point, as I see it:
1) let nature take its course- if they're raising a queen from one for the few fertilized eggs then great. (Would they ever try to raise a queen cell from drone larva?)
2) smush existing queen and queen cells and swap in a proven laying queen from one of the nucs. But- if there is a laying worker, would I be back to square one if laying workers can co-exist with queen?
Here's a few pics of some brood frames.
Thanks for any input.
Brad



