Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS => Topic started by: bobby on April 07, 2005, 09:50:24 pm

Title: laying workers?
Post by: bobby on April 07, 2005, 09:50:24 pm
i'm new so bare with me. at a bee meeting we discussed not  being
 able to locate the queen and not much happening inside. they talked about the workers who are laying can not fly, so one said he took the
 hive about 100 feet away and dumped it. he said they would die in the
 grass. is this true ?
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Robo on April 07, 2005, 10:07:13 pm
Maybe.......


I have seen it work, and have seen it not work.    It is worth a try,  but if it doesn't work,  the best thing to do is combine the laying worker hive with a stronger queen-right hive using the newspaper method.  The queen-right hive will kill the laying worker.  I have yet to have this method fail.  You can always create a split from the combined hive with a new queen.
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Horns Pure Honey on April 07, 2005, 10:07:15 pm
If it is cold enough then yes I would say they will die becuase they wont be able to crawl back to the hive. bye :D
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Jay on April 07, 2005, 10:09:00 pm
Laying workers are generally young nurse bees who, when the queen's pheremone is no longer circulating around the hive, begin laying sterile eggs. You can usually tell if you have laying workers because they are not fussy about where they lay the eggs and generally deposit 2,3, or even 4 eggs in a single cell. Since these young bees have never taken orientation flights they don't know their way around in the big wide world outside the hive (like the field bees do) and if taken 100 feet or so away, cannot find their way back to the hive and, yes, do die in the grass. But that's a good thing because a hive with laying workers in it have only drone hatch out and eventually, without workers, are doomed! :cry:

Dump the hive (every last bee), re-queen, the field bees will find their way back to the old hive location, new bees will hatch from the brood and with the new queen pheremone circulating around the hive, all will be well (in theory)! :D
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Robo on April 07, 2005, 10:19:11 pm
Quote from: Jay
they lay the eggs and generally deposit 2,3, or even 4 eggs in a single cell.


This is not a tell tale sign of a laying worker.  It is quite common for a young queen or an overwintered queen who is just starting to lay again to lay more than one egg per cell.  Given a week or so, they tend to settle down.  A broad scattered pattern is a better indication, especially when they are capped over as drones.  It is also a better chance that the eggs are from a laying worker if the eggs are stuck on the side of the cell and not placed nicely in the bottom of the cell.

I don't know if it is true or not,  but John claims a queen is the only bee that can back into a cell,  and that a laying worker lays eggs outside of a cell and it is then placed down into the cell.
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Finsky on April 08, 2005, 01:30:12 am
Here is new knowledge about egg laying workers. In the grass walking worker queen is an old fairy tale.

These have noticed 15 years ago. Read carefully. I have noticed the same result in my beekeeping.

If you have workers egg layers, just put into the hive a frame, which have new hatching workers and young larvas. Hive will be normal at ther next day when it begin to raise normal queen cells..


http://www.shef.ac.uk/~taplab/flwrres.html
 
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~taplab/pdf/rwscience2005.pdf  =polising
.
.
Title: laying workers?
Post by: firetool on April 08, 2005, 07:42:09 am
Robo what is this newspaper method you are speaking of. I have two feral collins S1and S2. I killed the queen by misstake in S2. They have made a couple of ettemps at making a new queen but thuse far have had no luck at it. I would like to put the bees that are still alive in S2 to some good use. If there is a way to get them excepted by S1 hive. I would like to try it, unless it poses to big a risk to S1 hive. They are stronge and doing very good. the queen is laying good patterns of brood. I don't want to screw them up any.

Thanks,

Brian
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Lesli on April 08, 2005, 08:01:30 am
Firetool, if your queenless colony is strong enough, give them a fram of eggs and young brood from the strong colony--maybe they can raise a queen from those eggs.

Otherwise, the newspaper method means opening the strong hive, putting a couple of sheets of newspaper on top, slitting it in a few places, and putting the queenless hive over it. The gives them time to get acquainted without fighting.
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Agility Mom on April 08, 2005, 08:12:19 am
Wish humans were as effective at policing as the isects seem to be. Perhaps it has something to do with having your head ripped off if you try to do something which is not for the common good.
Title: laying workers?
Post by: TwT on April 08, 2005, 08:25:54 am
if you can view it , there's a video on useing the newspaper method in the Requeening & Raising New Queens forum.


http://beemaster.com/beebbs/viewtopic.php?t=2098
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Jerrymac on April 08, 2005, 08:58:05 am
Brian,

I would go with Lesli's idea.
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Michael Bush on April 08, 2005, 11:07:27 am
>so one said he took the
hive about 100 feet away and dumped it. he said they would die in the
grass. is this true ?

This is a commonly held belief.  I don't believe it.  But shaking them out sometimes works to get them to accept a queen.  If you have several hives, I recommend just shaking them all out in front of the other hives and put the frames (minus the bees) in the other hives and split one of your strong ones if you really want another hive.

I've wasted a lot of queens and effort and time trying to get a laying worker hive to accept a queen.  The best luck I've had is a newspaper combine with a nuc.  But all in all, I don't think it's worth the effort.
Title: laying workers?
Post by: Anonymous on April 09, 2005, 08:55:01 am
Last year I and others in our club for some reason had a number of hives that started having a lot of drone cells. After searching by at least two members no queen was found in any of them, decided it must be a laying worker in each case.
Ordered new queens, took the hives from their stands about 100 Yards out into the grass then shook the bees off every frame after spraying them with vanilla. Placed a different hive in the spot where the removed one sat, placed the now empty hive we dumped in the place of the second hive. then we placed two frames of bees and brood from the second hive in it along with the caged queen. The next day we had once again two strong hives, and after three days in each case the queens had bee released ending our drone cell problems.
Nice thing about being a club member is you can always find another set of eyes when looking in a bee hive.
 :D  Al
Title: Re: laying workers?
Post by: Hewy on May 20, 2011, 02:42:42 pm
I have had this problem recently and tried the method of taking hive 100 feet away and shaking all on the ground. Well I had an influx of bees trying to get back in once I put the hive back... the workers that have already been out flying, and there was a big pile of bees left on the ground. I gave fresh eggs and a frame of fresh bees with Queen cell, 2 days later I saw signs of laying worker again! So, I repeated and we will see.
Title: Re: laying workers?
Post by: Kathyp on May 20, 2011, 03:12:10 pm
shaking the hive out works if you have other hives and if you put the original hive away.  if you just put the same box back, they will return to it.  if they do not have their home, they will move into other hives. 

shaking them out is the easiest way to deal with laying workers in my opinion, but only if you have other hives.

i'm not sure i'd do a combine with a queen-right hive and a laying worker hive.  seems that would be to much risk to the queen.
Title: Re: laying workers?
Post by: annette on May 20, 2011, 04:07:36 pm
Serge Labesque, a beekeeping Guru, in California says to place a frame with emerging brood into the hive the first week. Next week, place a frame of eggs into the hive. The bees that were born the week before will make the queen cell from the eggs. He says the other bees in the hive are too old to make the queen cell.

I have never tried this. I shook my hive out on the ground in front of the other hives and they were accepted into the other hive.

Title: Re: laying workers?
Post by: Michael Bush on May 21, 2011, 03:39:58 am
http://bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm)
http://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm)
Title: Re: laying workers?
Post by: MarkF on June 02, 2011, 03:51:46 pm
If you had a laying worker hive and placed a screen over it then placed another hive with a good queen over it, would her presence eventually surpress the laying workers.
Title: Re: laying workers?
Post by: VolunteerK9 on June 02, 2011, 03:53:47 pm
If you had a laying worker hive and placed a screen over it then placed another hive with a good queen over it, would her presence eventually surpress the laying workers.

If the goal is to combine a queenright hive with a laying worker one, I would just do a newspaper combine of the two.
Title: Re: laying workers?
Post by: MarkF on June 02, 2011, 06:36:38 pm
No I wasn't thinking about combining because you would lose a hive mearly wonding if by putting a queen right hive above a laying worker hive if the laying worker would be suppressed enough after a week or two to allow a new queen to be introduced.
Title: Re: laying workers?
Post by: Michael Bush on June 03, 2011, 02:29:20 am
>If you had a laying worker hive and placed a screen over it then placed another hive with a good queen over it, would her presence eventually surpress the laying workers.

No, but the pheromones from the open brood would.  The queen is irrelevant.