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kookaburra
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Thanks for being there for me!! It has been a reassurance to have all of you ready to answer my inane and not-so-inane questions and I appreciate it immensely.
I checked my bees Saturday, and sure enough, there are the eggs and newly hatched larvae.
Being not quite trusting yet,I checked tonight, and while there are still eggs and larvae, things don't seem quite right. Feels like a laying worker.
1. Scattered newly capped drone brood. Looks like worker cells with drones in it. Round ball like cappings. Most are still uncapped, though
2. emergency/swarm cells still there, still eggs and larvae in them. (if they try to raise a drone in there, will that be a "drag queen"???
) Do they still try if they have a laying worker?
Question: Will laying workers develop before a virgin queen can fully develop and mate? MB has been mentioning the ~4week number as the egg to laying time for a queen. It has been 3.5 weeks.
Question: If I have a laying worker does it work to give them a real capped queen cell from somewhere else?
If not, I do this from everything I've gleaned here,correct the wrong parts, please:
Buy a queen. Put her with 2 frames of brood (even if it is drone brood?) and a few pollen/honey (5 brood/store total) into a nuc box, let them accept her, then put the whole kebosh on top of the parent hive with newspaper between. Question: Will this work?
Here's my sequence of events:
April 10: Hive check, everything normal, but did notice an empty swarm cell.
April 17: uh-oh no eggs or larvae, only capped brood, noticed swarm/supercedure cells.
April 20: short look, noticed at least one capped supercedure cell.
May 1: Short look, eggs
and newly hatched larvae. In retrospect, there seemed to be some drone brood that seemed a bit young to have been missing a queen for 3 weeks (not capped yet?)
May 5: quick peek, mostly the same, but some capped cells, all capped cells are drone.
Thanks for your assessments and opinions!!
Rick
I checked my bees Saturday, and sure enough, there are the eggs and newly hatched larvae.
Being not quite trusting yet,I checked tonight, and while there are still eggs and larvae, things don't seem quite right. Feels like a laying worker.
1. Scattered newly capped drone brood. Looks like worker cells with drones in it. Round ball like cappings. Most are still uncapped, though
2. emergency/swarm cells still there, still eggs and larvae in them. (if they try to raise a drone in there, will that be a "drag queen"???

Question: Will laying workers develop before a virgin queen can fully develop and mate? MB has been mentioning the ~4week number as the egg to laying time for a queen. It has been 3.5 weeks.
Question: If I have a laying worker does it work to give them a real capped queen cell from somewhere else?
If not, I do this from everything I've gleaned here,correct the wrong parts, please:
Buy a queen. Put her with 2 frames of brood (even if it is drone brood?) and a few pollen/honey (5 brood/store total) into a nuc box, let them accept her, then put the whole kebosh on top of the parent hive with newspaper between. Question: Will this work?
Here's my sequence of events:
April 10: Hive check, everything normal, but did notice an empty swarm cell.
April 17: uh-oh no eggs or larvae, only capped brood, noticed swarm/supercedure cells.
April 20: short look, noticed at least one capped supercedure cell.
May 1: Short look, eggs

May 5: quick peek, mostly the same, but some capped cells, all capped cells are drone.
Thanks for your assessments and opinions!!
Rick