Laying workers question

[rgennaro]

I finally found an experienced local beekeeper who is going to help me with my hives. You can look at my previous posts for the saga of my small second hive that I got from catching a swarm.

He came over yesterday while I wasn?t around and inspected it and he told me that he thinks there are laying workers. He said he pulled two larvae out of one cell.

He suggested that we do a shake out about 1/4 mile away from the location of the hive and then see who comes back. He says a LW can?t fly very well and may not be able to come back. Then in a couple of days we check and try to introduce a queen.

I have never heard of this approach. Is it worth trying?

[cao]

A laying worker can fly just as well as any other worker.  I don't know your specifics on this hive.  But this late in the year, I would just dump them out in your yard and let them beg into your other hives.  The only other thing that I would try is add a frame of brood each week for three weeks to your hive and let them build their own queen.  But that would only be if there were lots of bees in the hive to make it worth the effort.

[iddee]

I would not trust this beek's diagnosis. There is never "A" laying worker. There are many laying workers in an LW hive. Any new queen may lay more then one egg in a cell for awhile, then settle down to only one per cell. Check your hive and post a description of what you see. If truly an  LW hive, there will be more than just that one sign.

[BeeMaster2]

Cao,
My second Nuc that I bought had a defective queen, DWV, and after four or five weeks of it being in my Apiary it was full of laying workers. I was given a new queen by the seller. My inspector told me to do a shake out before she was released. I shook the bees at over 100 yards from my hives. I had two at that time. The day after the shake out I went back to the spot and there was a ball of bees the size of my fist on the ground. By this time there were no nurse bees in this hive, the original queen never made a maiden filthy, her wings were too curled up, every time I saw her, the bees were walking over her so none of the workers were new. By this time there were lots of drones coming out of the hive. I dispatched the queen my self so I know she was not in the middle of the ball. I looked through the ball, using a stick and all it was was bees. Is suspect the laying workers develop their ovaries enough to weigh them down. It is either that or the laying workers develop as such right after hatching and never leave the hive even to orient. There were a lot of them that never made it back to the hive.
Jim Altmiller

[rgennaro]

To be clear the beek did not say there is only one LW (even I a newbeek knows that probably half of them are LW at this point and that there is always a few LW even in a queenright hive). When he told me the hive had gone LW I was prepared to do a shakeout in front of my other hive to let them beg their way in but he thinks it might be worth a try.

Anyway here are a few questions
1) I do not have an apiary. I have my main hive up the hill and this caught swarm nuc about 300 yards away (I left the box near where I did the cut out). If I do a shake out in front of my main hive will they not go back to their original location rather than begging their way in?
2) my main hive is doing pretty well. Can it spare a frame of brood a week at this time of year? One thing that puzzles me is that back when I caught the swarm I took 2 frames out of that hive (1 of honey and 1 of brood) and almost 2 months later the ones I put in to replace them have not even been drawn (I put new frames with wax covered foundation).

Thanks

[iddee]

Again, I would first confirm the LW. Then I would shake them out 50 feet from your main hive and let nature take it's course. In your area, it's not worth the trouble to try to save an LW hive this time of year. Even if successful at requeening, chances of wintering it is extremely slim.

[Michael Bush]

A shake out does not work.  Never has.  Never will.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfallacies.htm#onelayingworker

Part of the myth is that you have one laying worker and she doesn't know her way home.  When it gets really bad HALF the bees are laying workers and they ALL know they way home.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00299895
"More than half of the bees in laying worker colonies have developed ovaries (Sakagami 1954)..."-- Reproduction by worker honey bees (Apis mellifer L.) R.E. Page Jr and E.H. Erickson Jr. - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology August 1988, Volume 23, Issue 2, pp 117-126

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00218839.1995.11100883
"Reproductive honey bee workers have considerable fecundity, with laying workers in queenless colonies each producing c. 19-32 eggs per day (Perepelova, 1928, cited in Ribbands, 1953). "--Evidence for a queen-produced egg-marking pheromone and its use in worker policing in the honey bee FLW Ratnieks - Journal of Apicultural Research Volume 34, Issue 1, 1995 - Taylor & Francis

[rgennaro]

So we did a shakeout and by the time we walked back to the spot the bees were already there ... they all marched back into the box and we added a frame of brood from my other hive. Over the weekend we will try to introduce a new queen. I am not sure the hive was LW but it didn?t look queenright either. We couldn?t find the queen (and this time I had another pair of eyes) and the brood was not much and all over the place. I don?t understand why they killed the 2 queens I tried to introduce in the last few weeks. If all of this fails we will do a newspaper combine with the other hive.

A few hours later I went back to the shakeout spot and there were still a bunch of bees flying around there on the ground. Who knows.

While he was around we inspected the main hive. That queen is doing beautifully... lots of well,organized brood and plenty of stores though there are still about 4 frames that can be filled (it?s two 10-frame deep). We found the queen and marked it so I can easily find her next time. And now that I have seen one I am pretty sure there isn?t one in the smaller hive.

[rgennaro]

The saga gets more and more interesting. As I said in the previous post, last Thursday we did the shakeout and put a frame of brood into the Nuc. Today I opened the hive to put a new queen in (we were supposed to do it sooner but my new beek friend got busy with other projects) and lo and behold two queen cells are there one with an egg and one with a tiny larva and lots of royal jelly. The mistero however is that these cells are NOT on the frame we brought in but in one of the original nuc frames! No sign of a queen anywhere in the hive. We inadvertently destroyed the one with the egg but left the one with the tiny larva.

Where did these eggs come from? My beek friend claims that bees do move eggs ... so they had started some queen cells on the original frame and decided to take some eggs from the frame we brought in. I looked online and although controversial many people do believe that this is possible.

This could explain the larva, I am however puzzled by the presence of an egg. We brought the frame more than 4 days ago. Wouldn?t the egg have hatched by now?

The saga continues...  I think even my beek friend was a bit puzzled.

We put the queen cage in and the bees went to her but not in an aggressive way. We are going to check in 2 days and if the queen seems accepted destroy the other queen cell.

[BeeMaster2]

It is possible for laying workers bees to lay a female egg that can become a queen. Thelytoky is a type of parthenogenetic reproduction where unfertilized eggs develop into females. It is rare in European Honey Bees. Very common in Cape Honey Bees.
I have heard the arguments that bees can move eggs but but I very much doubt they can. When a queen lays an egg, she sticks it to the bottom of the cell.
I suppose anything is possible but I doubt it happens.
Jim Altmiller

[The15thMember]

It is possible for laying workers bees to lay a female egg that can become a queen. Thelytoky is a type of parthenogenetic reproduction where unfertilized eggs develop into females. It is rare in European Honey Bees. Very common in Cape Honey Bees.
I have heard the arguments that bees can move eggs but but I very much doubt they can. When a queen lays an egg, she sticks it to the bottom of the cell.
I suppose anything is possible but I doubt it happens.
Jim Altmiller

Fascinating. 

[rgennaro]

It is possible for laying workers bees to lay a female egg that can become a queen. Thelytoky is a type of parthenogenetic reproduction where unfertilized eggs develop into females. It is rare in European Honey Bees. Very common in Cape Honey Bees.
I have heard the arguments that bees can move eggs but but I very much doubt they can. When a queen lays an egg, she sticks it to the bottom of the cell.
I suppose anything is possible but I doubt it happens.
Jim Altmiller

After I posted I went on an online search and found out about thelytoky. I also doubt that they moved an egg and I doubt it?s thelytoky also. Probably a LW egg, which would have developed into a very big drone after being fed royal jelly? But if this is a LW hive why are they not attacking the queen?

[Michael Bush]

>But if this is a LW hive why are they not attacking the queen?

If you catch a laying worker hive at the point where they are building queen cells you can usually introduce a queen with no problems.  After that point it's pretty much impossible unless you give them a few weeks of open brood.

[rgennaro]

thanks Mr.Bush. I have been reading your website which provides invaluable info.

We seem to have been able to introduce a queen. We took her out of the cage on Monday and she was not attacked. We had destroyed another queen cell a couple of days earlier. I'll check later this week to see how she is doing.

Now the issue is if we have enough time before winter. We'll see.