Laying workers with queen cells?

[Jim]

I recently opened one of my hives to find several swarm cups and a few supercedure cells.  Busy not paying attention I cut most of them out before I realized there wasn't any capped or developing brood.  I left a couple supercedure cells ( located in the center of the frame).  After a week I checked back no capped brood and the cells were gone.  Thinking the queen had emerged and had not mated yet, I closed up the hive.  A week later I checked, to find developing brood, with multiple eggs in cells.  I assume that I have a couple laying workers, and a lost queen.  There are several  queen cups being formed with royal jelly.  Will a hive know if an egg is fertile or will any egg stimulate the workers to construct a  queen cell in lieu of a fertile queen which of course will develop as a drone?
Thank you for advice in advance.

[Robo]

A week later I checked, to find developing brood, with multiple eggs in cells.  I assume that I have a couple laying workers, and a lost queen.  

Don't assume multiple eggs in a cell means a laying worker.  It is quite common for a young queen to lay 2-3 eggs in a cell until she "settles" down.
 
Now if your finding 5+ eggs in cells and no pattern to the laying, then that would be more of a sign of a laying worker.

I just went through a similar ordeal this weekend.   A few weeks ago I had a queen introduction into a split fail,  and they built some queen cells.  I was in the process of grafting some more queens so I just left them alone, hoping to replace the cells with one of my grafting, before they hatched.  Well needless to say when I went to install my cell,  I found a virgin queen running around and a couple of other queen cells had hatched.  I figured there was no way I would find all the virgins, so I did not put in my cell.  I would let them duke it out and settle on a queen before I tried re-queening again.  On a subsequent inspection, the original virgin was gone and I saw another.  A week later I saw some eggs, a little sporatic, but nothing I hadn't seen before.  On the last inspection,  all the eggs were capped drones, and no queen to be found.


Since it is very hard to get rid of a laying worker and re-introduce a queen,  I just shook all the bees out and took the hive away.  The bees immediately found the hive next to them (hive they were split from).

The laying worker either won't find the hive, or if she does, will be killed by the queenright hive.

[guest]

Just thought I would let you know it turns out that the queen cells all turned out to be none fertile and now have a diminishing hive.  I think I will combine it with another hive using newspaper.

[Stinger]

I have a question regarding a laying worker.  My understanding is that a laying worker is sterile and that none of her eggs could develope into larva.  From reading the above posts I get the impression that a laying worker's eggs can develop into drones.  Is this correct?

[eivindm]

I have a question regarding a laying worker.  My understanding is that a laying worker is sterile and that none of her eggs could develope into larva.  From reading the above posts I get the impression that a laying worker's eggs can develop into drones.  Is this correct?

Yes this is correct.

eivindm