[kaizen]

One of my rounds of queens i made this year i put the cells into 10 splits that did not successfully make their own queen. I have some issues now and several questions. Situation is I have about 5 out of 10 in one yard that are laying drones only.
-Killing the queen and giving them a new laying queen is best. But what if i can't find the queen? Is it possible they kicked her out or killed her?
-One hive i can't find the queen. There are a bunch of drone brood and several huge queen cells. If the original queen is only laying drone then how can they make a queen? If one happens to hatch she has to be a drone layer no matter what right?
-One hive has lots of drone brood but then some worker brood. Pattern indicates queen and all eggs are on the bottom of cell as should be. Scratching my head on this one. Possible she had a little brood and then sputtered into drone? Can it go the other way?
-Any reason in particular such a high number of the new queens are drone layers in this yard? Nothing to do with my breeding right?

 

[John Davis]

Your breeding, most likely not.
Your location and poor mating weather during the time the Queens needed to mate most likely yes.
Sometimes a queen will lay drones for a little while then get control and start laying fertilized eggs. Not the norm but occasionally happens.
Sometimes workers will start queen cells on unfertilized eggs (laying workers do this sometimes) confusing for us but they are trying to survive, usually not capped.

 

[kaizen]

Your breeding, most likely not.
Your location and poor mating weather during the time the Queens needed to mate most likely yes.
Sometimes a queen will lay drones for a little while then get control and start laying fertilized eggs. Not the norm but occasionally happens.
Sometimes workers will start queen cells on unfertilized eggs (laying workers do this sometimes) confusing for us but they are trying to survive, usually not capped.

The hive with queen cells has like 4 beauties and they look like swarm cells at the bottom of the frames as opposed to emergency ones which i would have expected