BBKA Forum

We think we have a queenless colony with laying workers, as there are cells with multiple eggs, a lot of drone cells, not many larvae, a funny brood pattern and a lot of chalk brood. This is from a colony we thought had successfully produced a new queen after we moved the old queen to a nuc approx 6 weeks ago to prevent swarming. We've never seen a new queen but there were eggs and larvae and a week ago we knocked out several queen cells.
I'm now wondering whether these queen cells must have come from a queen (& maybe they were trying to replace her already for some reason) or could they have come from a laying worker's unfertilised egg? Maybe that's a daft question but my wife's not come across it before & I couldn't find the answer in her books or on the web. She's the chief beekeeper and I got roped in to help with the lifting but want to understand what's going on a bit better.
Sods law the queen in a nuc was doing splendidly and has just gone to a new home but the chief beekeeper has built up more other colonies than she really wants, Plan now is so shake the queenless one out and burn the frames with the chalk brood.

David, they will sometimes attempt to make "drone" queens from unfertilised eggs. A lesson in going nowhere I'm afraid as destined for total failure.

Rather than a 'normal' brood pattern, laying workers can produce a patchy brood pattern - patches over several frames - which is, my guess, what you have here. Out of desparation, bees will sometimes attempt to produce queencells out of something. Thankfully you have other colonies; if your laying worker colony has supers on, these could be put on another strong colony.
There's another thread titled "Multiple Laying Worker Swarms" under the Beginners Forum which may be relevant. https://www.bbkaforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=992

Welcome to the forum by the way.

As with all laying worker colonies they are destined to fail and the best thing i have found is to shake them out and start again..here is one of several King cups a laying worker colony produced a few years ago..

Thanks for the quick informative replies,much appreciated!