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  • Multiple laying worker swarms, what to do with frames with drone eggs and brood.

  • Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
 #7832  by Hbee
 18 Jun 2020, 23:35
Recently I picked up a small swarm, popped it in a split Nuc, went through a few times to locate a queen or eggs. Surprisingly I could t spot a queen on such a few frames of bees. Eventually eggs were found, but then I noticed multiple eggs in occasional cells. All at the bottom of the cells though. I let it carry on, checked back and sure enough all drone brood.

Shortly after that my buckfast hive I'd split, it's virgin swarmed I caught that one, hived, after a few times through no queen, then One day eggs, on a few frames, I thought brilliant, left it a while checked back and 5 frames of eggs. Now I'm spotting eggs on top of pollen a and mutliple eggs in cells. Sure enough the first frames are being drawn out to drone brood.

To rectify I've added 1 frame to each from good hive with lavae in ( as I read this will reduce the laying workers eventually then I can introduce a queen effectively.)

My question is this, as I believe I have caught it and identified it while frames have eggs and uncapped lavae in, can I pull the frames to kill off the drone brood/eggs the return later for them to be cleaned out? With drawn out frames being at a premium is this a solution.

Or is there any benefit to allowing the drone brood to develop?

I'm open to suggestions, and people's experiences.

I'm future I'm going to be a bit more gentle a out my swarm collection techniques, as no doubt this is what has made them Q- either that or I've been unfortunate to collect a drone laying queen and lost the virgin on her mating flight.
(May have something to do with the sparrows using the apiary as a feeding station.)

Really appreciate any assistance here as searching hasn't given any suggestions. Image
https://pasteboard.co/JdIDKIe.jpg
Image
https://pasteboard.co/JdIErzN.jpg
Last edited by Hbee on 18 Jun 2020, 23:44, edited 1 time in total.
 #7835  by AdamD
 19 Jun 2020, 09:23
Hbee wrote:To rectify I've added 1 frame to each from good hive with lavae in ( as I read this will reduce the laying workers eventually then I can introduce a queen effectively.)
LW colonies can finish up with a psudo queen that has a retinue, just like a proper queen. But how do you know which one is the queen? And introducing a queen to a colony which already has a queen is unlikely to succeed. So, once laying workers develop, it's pretty well impossible to stop - and I've tried adding brood to stop it. An experiment that didn't work :) (A frame a week for 3 weeks until a queencell is made - then adding a queen. killed. Then add another queen. Survived. By this time 6 weeks or so, I would have been better to have simply made up a nuc).
If you want more colonies, the best course of action would probably be to make up a nuc with bees and a couple of frames of brood and add a queen.

Some suggest just shaking out a LW colony. However you can unite a small laying worker colony on the top of a standard hive with newspaper (Above the supers is fine). After a week, you can remove the brood box from the top, shaking the bees in front of the hive. I have united bigger LW colonies, first by moving the LW colony away so the flyers return to the nearest hive. Then, a few days later, unite the remainder over the supers of another colony as described. Reason for the split: I would not want to overwhelm the good colony with LW's.

Once I did rescue a LW nuc by replacing it with a nuc and a frame of brood and a caged queen. This was on a good flying day so the flyers quickly returned and entered the nuc, leaving the LW's in the removed nuc; they subsequently released the queen and they were OK.
 #7836  by AndrewLD
 19 Jun 2020, 10:29
My understanding is that once a colony has a laying worker queen then as far as it is concerned it has a queen and will not necessarily see the need to draw out emergency queen cells. I am less clear on when they might see the advantage in superceding their laying worker queen. Guard bees will not allow laying workers to join the colony which is why beekeepers shake out laying worker colonies in front of other hives.
The notion one should unite a laying worker colony to a normal colony seems alien to me although I do not doubt Adam's experience in doing so. You are circumventing the normal colony defence and I wonder what the risk is of losing your queen. Furthermore, laying worker colonies are often confirmed at the point when the colony has lost a normal balance in workers to drones, so to unite a load of extra drones onto another colony seems inherently wrong.

So just because you can doesn't mean you should.

I had a laying worker colony recently and dealt with it by moving the hive around the apiary bleeding off bees until I was left with the remnant, that I then shook out. In light of my current situation where the focus has shifted to disease control, I wonder if I haven't just dumped a lot of sick bees on my other hives - although it could also explain the piles of dead bees in front of some of my hives, perhaps the guard bees rejected them..............
 #7837  by NigelP
 19 Jun 2020, 12:01
Welcome to the forum BTW.
Shake them out, it's really not worth the effort of trying to sort them out as Adam and Andrew have suggested. And by constantly adding frames of eggs/larvae you are weakening your main hives with no guarantee that it will work.
It's quicker to make up a strong nuc and add a frame of eggs from your best hive. 16 days later you have a virgin queen (16days) usually mated and laying by 5 weeks. A far simpler quicker solution, assuming you want increase. If not just shake them out.
 #7839  by Hbee
 19 Jun 2020, 12:17
Really interesting reading your experiences on this.

In order to use the frames: I'm going to pull these frames of drone lavae and eggs, chill and allow bees to clear them, to save the 7 drawn out frames as I'm low on drawn out frames anyway.

Going forward: as ive already added the lavae frames from good hives I will see what they do, if they draw queen cells I'll let them continue. I've given up the idea of getting a new hive in the go or reuniting the buckfast daughter swarm to it's hive now.

The buckfast daughter swarm seems like it wants to draw qcs as Everytime I go in they have made 4 or 5 which is just bizarre after reading above.

Moving them around apiary may be a fair shout to utilise the bees, safer with the swarm from my hive than the swarm collected elsewhere.

If nothing else they have drawn some needed frames if only they didn't lay in them!!
 #7851  by Steve 1972
 20 Jun 2020, 09:49
As mentioned above laying worker colonies are just not worth the hassle of trying to sort them out..i have had three over the past several years and nothing i tried to correct the situation helped..the first laying worker colony i had i tried to RE Queen with a bought in Queen...the bees seemed fine around the caged Queen on the top bars so i placed the cage in between the frames and left them to it for a few days..around three days later i popped the candy plug open and left them too it again..another couple of days later i found the marked Queen dead on the ground at the front of the hive..i have tried frames of eggs from other colonies but that did not work either and in the end all my laying worker colonies have been shaken out on a nice warm day..

However if you think you have a drone laying Queen they could be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel but you need to find her (but she could be small) and very hard to find..got the tea shirt for that a few times..
If you do happen to find a drone layer you could squish her and unite over news paper to another colony or try Re Queening..good luck as it is a awkward situation to be in..