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Author Topic: laying worker(s)?  (Read 1198 times)

Offline dogdrs

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laying worker(s)?
« on: July 07, 2009, 10:14:16 pm »
I'm not sure if I might have a laying worker situation. A little background first. Through the middle of June I had a hive swarm three times in a row.  So, I split the hive on June 20th, giving each a frame with at least one queen cell and frames with brood.  Due to lousy weather and other things out of my control, I just checked them both for the first time today.  One hive probably has a new queen.  I didn't see her, but there was a lot of new brood in a very uniform pattern and I saw many VERY young larvae.  The other hive had only spotty brood.  There were a large percentage of drone capped cells and only a small area on one frame of capped worker cells.  The rest of the brood frames were filled with mostly open nectar.  The only eggs I could find were 2 eggs in one open queen cup located on the bottom of one frame.  There were a couple other queen cups but I couldn't see into them because workers were covering them.  Questions:  Do I have laying workers?  If so did I catch it early enough that placing a brood frame with eggs from another hive may correct it?(Which I did do)  It's been 17 days since I did the split, but it's been longer since the hive has had a laying queen because of the 3 swarms in a row.

Offline Michael Bush

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Re: laying worker(s)?
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2009, 10:43:43 pm »
You will always see a few drone cells scattered about.  Virtually no worker cells.  Maybe some queen cells.  Probably multiple eggs, especially in drone cells and on top of pollen.

A frame of open brood from another hive every week for three weeks is almost foolproof.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm
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