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  • From: Marty Hanks <marty AT justbeenc.com>
  • To: "NaturalBeesinNC AT yahoogroups.com" <NaturalBeesinNC AT yahoogroups.com>, Orange County Bees <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] laying worker issues? My shake down experiment today
  • Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 18:01:11 -0400

Hey gang,

Had a very interesting day with the girls. One of my hives at a local bee yard was discovered to have what looked like a "laying worker" situation. What it turned out to be was a poorly mated queen! I had 4 frames of various stages of drone brood. No worker brood in sight. 

I've attached a link to the pictures for today's introduction of a new queen with what i think can be the best chance to remedy the situation. Here it is and just below those pictures is a short video i took at the end as i was killing SHB. Guess who i found walking around on the burlap? The old poorly mated queen! I quickly took her away and killed her. Had to be done.

Queen install and "Shake Down" pictures:

Here is the best technique i can think of to TRY to assure the acceptance of a new queen into a laying worker/queen situation.

1). Borrow a frame from a nearby hive with eggs, larvae and brood to place the new queen cage onto. Place a frame w/ nectar and pollen beside her. 
*The scent of the fertilized eggs helps trick the colony to accept the queen.

2). Take all other frames 40-50' away from the hive location

3). Shake out the frames one by one onto a blanket. Sweep off any stragglers. 

4). Start process on second box. 

5). Leave the top cover off for 15-20 mins to add in the pheromone trail back to the hive. 

6). While dumping the bees you can search out SHB to kill. ;-)

7). Place lid back on and come back in 2-3 days to see if she was released. 

Trying to requeen a hive that has/had a laying worker OR in this case a poorly mated queen is very hard to fix. I had tried to do a paper combination to fix this hive a month ago and that did NOT work. Here is to hoping this way works out.

cheers,
marty




  • [ocba] laying worker issues? My shake down experiment today, Marty Hanks, 08/24/2014

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