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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Daniel Kenan <dan.kenan AT gmail.com>, ocba <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Multiple eggs per cell: laying workers vs overzealous newbie queen
  • Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 12:28:47 -0400

Dan,

You would logically think that's the case, but it isn't how it works out in practice.

There are always a few laying workers in a hive. Normally, the housekeeping bees recognize their eggs as being "not right" (for example, they don't have queen marker pheromone on them) and they eat them. However in a hive that feels it is hopelessly queenless, the worker bees accept the laying worker eggs as being "normal" and act as if they have a queen; they are engaging in a last-chance Hail Mary play to at least get some of their genes out in the world through drones. So technically the real problem isn't laying workers, it is worker bees that embrace laying workers. If you combine these confused workers with a healthy queen-right hive, they will "reset" and return to behaving as they should.

Another way to reset a laying worker colony is to put a frame of open worker brood in the hive. Repeat at regular intervals over a couple of weeks so there is always open worker brood present. Eventually the worker brood pheromone will "reset" the housekeeping bees so they'll again recognize good eggs from bad ones and their raise a normal queen from the larvae you are introducing. This method works but consumes too much time and resources to be practical.

So -- when you combine a laying worker hive with a queen-right hive, there are two possible outcomes: 1) the "messed up" bees convert the queen-right bees to their weird suicidal cult, or 2) the emotionally-stable queen-right bees provide a smoothing influence over the psycho bees and reset them. As it turns out, the second option is what happens. I wouldn't try this with 50,000 messed-up bees versus a thousand good ones, but with more good ones than bad ones and lots of "good brood" (open worker brood) in the queen-right hive, this is what I expect to happen. Also remember to put the "bad" bees in the "good" bees hive, not the other way around.

Randall

On 4/20/2015 11:22 AM, Daniel Kenan wrote:
CAP37QBEBZgS3ipDASCr+NnT3gmqxPLcqydigLwRAaBLVcjA6eg AT mail.gmail.com" type="cite">
Randall,

If the laying workers emerged so quickly (within 1 week after installing package), I assume they were already present in the package and never accepted the new queen. If they have already killed one queen, isn't it risky to combine the hives, even with the newspaper method? I'm afraid they will kill our good queen too.

Instead, would there be merit in using the shakeout method first, to hopefully remove all laying workers, then combine the hives?

I'm happy to pursue a nuc or swarm for the abandoned hive. Finding one is a different matter....

Thanks to everyone for the input.

Dan

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 10:44:55 -0400
From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [ocba] Multiple eggs per cell: laying workers vs
        overzealous newbie queen
Message-ID: <553510E7.3010800 AT gmail.com" style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">553510E7.3010800 AT gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"

Dan,

As Damon Runyon said, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet." From your description,
I'd bet that you are correct with respect to your laying worker problem.
You'll know for sure when that uncapped brood is capped (9 days after
the egg is laid); ALL of them will be drones.

The first step would be to very carefully go through the hive and try to
find a queen. Did you sign up with Dave Eckert during the bee class to
get an experienced mentor who could give you a second opinion?

Simply introducing a new queen to a laying worker colony won't work --
the bees think they have a queen so they'll kill the new one. The
easiest and probably best thing to do is just combine this colony with
your other one. You can split it back into two hives later.

An alternative is the shake-out method: you take the whole hive several
hundred yards away and shake/brush the bees off of every frame. Put the
now-empty equipment back where it came from and supposedly all but the
laying workers will return to the hive. Then you can introduce a queen
using the usual routine.

I've done both. The combine method makes the most sense if you have the
resources to start over with a new split or new package. With the
shake-out method, if you get the hive going again, you are doing so with
old bees.

Hope this helps.

Randall Austin


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