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Author Topic: 2 eggs in cells  (Read 2906 times)

Offline sean

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2 eggs in cells
« on: June 14, 2007, 04:27:17 pm »
was going through my hive on sunday and noticed that there were 2 frames in separate hives where i saw one cell with two eggs. will the queen miss at times or is this an indication that there is/will be a problem. I had a problem in another hive with a laying worker but its ok now.

Offline doak

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #1 on: June 14, 2007, 05:56:31 pm »
Sometime they will drop more than one. New queens does it more.
If you know you have a queen I wouldn't worry, it'l be taken care of.
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Offline sean

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #2 on: June 17, 2007, 09:18:43 am »
just an update. had a hive with a laying worker which i combined with a queen-rite hive about two weeks ago. I just found a frame with most cells having 2 or more eggs in them. I thought that they had killed the queen but she is there. The queen is very young(about a month old)

Online Michael Bush

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #3 on: June 17, 2007, 01:50:46 pm »
My website:  bushfarms.com/bees.htm en espanol: bushfarms.com/es_bees.htm  auf deutsche: bushfarms.com/de_bees.htm  em portugues:  bushfarms.com/pt_bees.htm
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Offline Brian D. Bray

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2007, 10:13:27 pm »
When doing a combine involving a laying worker hive you can end up with both a queen and a laying worker in the same hive.    The way to solve that is to shake out the laying worker hive a day before combining it with a queen right hive.

In some hives you can end up with a laying worker above the excluder.  Most people mistakenly think their queen got loose above the excluder and laid drone eggs when in actuality the drone eggs were the result of a laying worker.  Most queen right hives will 86 a developing laying worker so the drone comb above the excluder is short lived.  However in the case of combining a queen right and a laying worker hive this may not always be true--just as you can end up with 2 queens in a hive you can end up with a laying worker and a queen in the same hive.  It occurs seldom but is one of occassional exceptions to the rule.
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Offline sean

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #5 on: June 17, 2007, 10:25:41 pm »
"When doing a combine involving a laying worker hive you can end up with both a queen and a laying worker in the same hive.    The way to solve that is to shake out the laying worker hive a day before combining it with a queen right hive."

Not sure i am, understanding what you are saying regarding solving the problem. I should have shaken out the hive before combining. what i did was a newspaper combine. How do i resolve the current situation, if the pheromone from the brood suppresses egg laying in workers, once they start to lay will they stop?(considering there is now brood in the hive)

Online Michael Bush

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2007, 11:07:49 pm »
If you read the link I posted, you'll see my point was that two eggs does not mean it's a laying worker hive.  It just means you have a queen who either didn't have enough room to lay or is just getting the hang of it.

Laying worker hives have triples and upward.  Often five or six or more eggs in a cell.
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Offline sean

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #7 on: June 17, 2007, 11:19:28 pm »
ok got it. will give it some time and see what happens. What happens when those eggs hatch, does one larva/larvae die?

Offline Brian D. Bray

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #8 on: June 17, 2007, 11:33:57 pm »
The bees will remove (eat) one or both of the eggs.  I agree with MB that a few isolated twoosies of eggs in cells are probbably from a new (or old) queen.  That is most likely what the situation is. 

I was just pointing out something that some beekeepers will not admit too, that a hive can be both queen right and also have a laying worker.  In the case of a laying worker the laying worker doesn't necessarily stop laying because of the presence of the brood, after all, the laying worker is the source of some of it. 
Combining a hive with a laying worker with a queen right hive doesn't always correct the problem of a laying worker.  Since a laying worker is actually laying workers some of the workers may stop laying in the presence of the queen while others might not.  Also the further away from brood chamber one gets the less impact the queen has on the hive--hence a laying worker might develop on the short term until the other bees put a kabosh on it.  If a laying worker has been a norm in one part of the combine--it may not be kaboshed once a hive is made queen right.
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Online Michael Bush

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Re: 2 eggs in cells
« Reply #9 on: June 18, 2007, 07:56:13 am »
>I was just pointing out something that some beekeepers will not admit too, that a hive can be both queen right and also have a laying worker.

See page 9 of "The Wisdom of the Hive"

"Although worker honey bees cannot mate, they do possess ovaries and can produce viable eggs; hence they do have the potential to have male offspring (in bees and other Hymenoptera, fertilized eggs produce females while unfertilized eggs produce males). It is now clear, however, that this potential is exceedingly rarely realized as long as a colony contains a queen (in queenless colonies, workers eventually lay large numbers of male eggs; see the review in Page and Erickson 1988). One supporting piece of evidence comes from studies of worker ovary development in queenright colonies, which have consistently revealed extremely low levels of development. All studies to date report fare fewer than 1 % of workers have ovaries developed sufficiently to lay eggs (reviewed in Ratnieks 1993; see also Visscher 1995a). For example, Ratnieks dissected 10,634 worker bees from 21 colonies and found that only 7 had moderately developed egg (half the size of a completed egg) and that just one had a fully developed egg in her body."

If 1% of workers in a QUEENRIGHT HIVE lay eggs then a NORMAL booming hive of 100,000 has 1,000 laying workers.
My website:  bushfarms.com/bees.htm en espanol: bushfarms.com/es_bees.htm  auf deutsche: bushfarms.com/de_bees.htm  em portugues:  bushfarms.com/pt_bees.htm
My book:  ThePracticalBeekeeper.com
-------------------
"Everything works if you let it."--James "Big Boy" Medlin