Grafting to a laying worker nuc

[Dallasbeek]

Something new for one beekeeper is old for lots of others.  That's the purpose of this and similar forums.  MB says queen pheromone isn't strong enough to overcome laying workers.  It takes brood -- about three frames, one after another -- to do that.  When I reinvent the wheel, it's still just a wheel like millions of others, isn't it?  But if somebody has a surplus of queens, he/she can have at the experiments to his/her heart's content.

I went back to the original two posts in this string and, without reading every posting between there and here it seems to me like we got off the original topic and idea.  if you have time LJ, read through this string and see if you agree.  Right now, I have to get to a doctor's appointment.

[drjeseuss]

Something new for one beekeeper is old for lots of others.  That's the purpose of this and similar forums.  MB says queen pheromone isn't strong enough to overcome laying workers.  It takes brood -- about three frames, one after another -- to do that.  When I reinvent the wheel, it's still just a wheel like millions of others, isn't it?  But if somebody has a surplus of queens, he/she can have at the experiments to his/her heart's content.

I went back to the original two posts in this string and, without reading every posting between there and here it seems to me like we got off the original topic and idea.  if you have time LJ, read through this string and see if you agree.  Right now, I have to get to a doctor's appointment.

I certainly agree the topic has drifted about a few times, but still remains informative and interesting.  Sometimes an answer is less valuable than an understanding of why the answer is correct, as it may lead to a different conclusion and/or method through the new understanding...  as example, is it in fact brood pheremone that breaks the laying workers from that routine, or are you only preventing new laying workers while allowing the current layers to age, die off, and be of no overall impact?  To me, these are two very different scenarios.  To a further point, if brood pheremone truely stops the laying workers, then artificial brood pheremone should be able to break a LW colony...  1 drop per week for 3 weeks, then introduce a queen...  this could save someone that didn't have endless colonies to swap frames around with.  If it's the act of 'waiting out' the layers and just holding the fort until they pass, then overwhelming them among other populations as I did would be an option for those with multiple hive.  As was noted, this does eliminate a hve, but in the process, you could as easily swap frames the other way to build back the hive as you swap the LW frames into the other hives...  You'd still end up with a queenless hive, it would just be accepting of a queen or graft, rather than beeing stuck in the laying worker loop.  I don't think anyone is trying to reinvent the wheel, just trying to understand if wheels would be better made of wood or rubber, big or small, tread or no, solid or air-filled, and so on...

And yes, I was the kid that said 'Why?' all the time.  :)

[Dallasbeek]

Yes, I agree that the conversation is sometimes more important than a solution.  I like your point of three weeks using the time so the LW passes from the scene.  My understanding of MB and, I think, Iddee's rule of one frame a week of brood for three weeks had been that it took that long to suppress the LW, but it makes just as much sense that it keeps other workers from becoming layers and the LWs die off. 

I, too, always wanted to know why, along with "how fast/high will it go" and "what happens if I ....?"

[drjeseuss]

I certainly wonder what the case is. I'm going to do a little digging to see if I can find anything showing the brood pheromone reverses the egg production in the workers.

[Michael Bush]

>My understanding of MB and, I think, Iddee's rule of one frame a week of brood for three weeks had been that it took that long to suppress the LW, but it makes just as much sense that it keeps other workers from becoming layers and the LWs die off. 

It suppresses them.  It takes three weeks to get the job done if they are too far along the path of laying workers.  It takes less if you catch it early.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm#pheromones

"the queen's pheromones are neither necessary nor sufficient for inhibiting worker's ovaries. Instead, they strongly inhibit the workers from rearing additional queens. It is now clear that the pheromones that provide the proximate stimulus for workers to refrain from laying eggs come mainly from the brood, not from the queen (reviewed in Seeling 1985; see also Willis, Winston, and Slessor 1990)."--Wisdom of the Hive, Thomas Seeley, page 11

[little john]

Michael - as I pointed out in an earlier thread, that Seeley quote has been shown to be incorrect by the later work of Slessor and others.

Re: the introduction of a queen to 'cure' the laying worker problem - I still think this is a technique worth considering if there is the time and willingness to experiment with it:

"[...] old queens are readily accepted by the bees. I have dropped an old queen into a colony of laying workers where she was accepted and in time she reformed the laying workers and later the queen was superseded."

Jay Smith, 'Better Queens', page 23 of 119 (from the 5Mb .pdf file)

or 'Queens Reared During Supersedure - 17' (from:  http://www.bushfarms.com/beesbetterqueens.htm)

LJ

 

[drjeseuss]

CaseyT's observations seem to indicate the laying worker continued despite brood and queen. This is why I wonder if the change to laying worker isn't reversed, but they are cleared thanks to their short lifespans. I have no doubt the pheromones at work normally supress them from laying in the first place, which would keep more from developing.

An interesting test, preferably in an observation hive , would be to allow the hive to become laying worker.  Next, mark some of the layers if possible. Then add frames  of older open brood weekly. The brood frame should be too old for them to make queens, but should still provide the necessary pheromones. Care should be taken to ensure no eggs or young larvae.  Over the next weeks, determine if the layers have reverted back to foragers, or if they continue to lay.

[Michael Bush]

>Michael - as I pointed out in an earlier thread, that Seeley quote has been shown to be incorrect by the later work of Slessor and others.

Most anything we say about bees is an oversimplification, but if they are not suppressed by open brood pheromones then the frame of open brood every week for three weeks would not work.  But it does work.  I have seldom seen adding a queen work and never seen it work without other manipulations before doing it.  A queen cell has worked often enough to be worth a try.  But I think it just goes off as a supersedure.  It appears they think they have a queen (based on the accumulative pheromones of thousands of laying workers) but also sense that she is not doing well (based on the pheromones that the laying workers lack and the lack of brood pheromones) so they allow the supersedure to go.

[CaseyT]

Michael, my observations do not support that either the queen or open brood suppress the laying worker.  (Granted, the observation hive is not large enough to have three frames of brood.)  But my observations do support that the bees will clear drone brood when there is good brood present.

However, as I think about this, perhaps it's not so much a matter of suppressing or changing the laying workers, but perhaps an issue of making the other bees change their behavior such that they are then able to accept the queen, such as through your method of introducing the brood frames over time.

I am by no means an expert in the matter, which is why I have been posting to this thread, to both share my observations and glean everyone else's knowledge.  I have very much appreciated and enjoyed the informative and constructive conversation on this thread!

[don2]

That is news to me. I did not know observation could detect chemical changes inside a living being. But we can detect body motions but don't know exactly what causes all them.

Maybe I should have added brood to the split that had eggs, just to boost it. But it didn't need boosting, so I lost out on an experiment because things seemed to be normal and was not. That said, I or anyone else cannot tell if adding brood to the other split kept them from developing laying workers. It did not reverse it because there were none. It did give the bees an opportunity
to develop a queen cell. So by my action we cannot know, can we.

From my experience during the 15 years I have kept bees, not being able to find the queen and determining their is laying workers cannot take place by observation until there is capped brood. Ad this 24 +/- days to the number of days it takes for laying workers to develop. a lot of time has past already Unless one is working an experiment to find out these things about what causes and reverses  laying workers then a laying worker colony is doomed.

We already know the queen will not lay, or either the bees will not rear brood if there is not a sufficient amount of bees to take care of it. So if they don't accept a queen or a queen cell with in a certain length of time and brood is not added the colony will dwindle  away. d2

[drjeseuss]

That is news to me. I did not know observation could detect chemical changes inside a living being. But we can detect body motions but don't know exactly what causes all them.

That's fairly passive aggressive now, isn't it?  I don't think the coments here are to state observation of chemical change within the body...  but rather to attempt to better understand the behaviours at hand.

I have no doubt that, as Michael noted, adding brood at a rate of 1 frame per week will 'correct' the problem.  My curiosity lies more with the mode of action at hand with this.  let's consider what's happening in a laying  worker hive as we understand it.  Pheremone levels have dropped to a point that one worker developes an ability to lay, then another, and another.  I suspect eventually there will reach a point of balance where these laying workers will suppress others from also becoming layers.  However, when 1 or more layers die off the pharemone levels would drop slightly, and allow another few foragers to begin laying, taking the place...  This would naturally continue until there were none left.  In my experience, when I attempted to add a graft to a LW colony, it was promptly torn down, though days before they had emergency cells, and also days after.  Those did not mature as they were drone eggs, but it shows that at least some of the population felt a need to correct the situation.  Now, let's consider that adding brood breaks the cycle, and also allows them a chance to produce a viable emergency cell when they are ready. We know that typically it will work, but HOW?  Are the laying workers ceasing to lay over the course of the 3 weeks, returning to foragers?  Maybe.  Or might these current layers continue to death, but are not replaced as before, since there is now brood pheremone to supress new layers?  In CaseyT's observations o the behaviour, it appears the layer continues, but is outnumbered by the rest of the hive to a point that it is no longer a problem.  This shows, in this small and uncontrolled observation, that his layer did not revert due to brood pheremones, but was simply not joined or replaced by other workers.  This may seem a trivial detail, but to me, there is a distinct difference here in the mode of action to remedy the hive's issue.  It also may offer some new ways of addressing this problem for those with one or many hives.

[don2]

That being the case I would have to come to the conclusion that because this layer was not followed has little to do with whether or not brood will reverse the action of the layer but prevented others from developing to laying. Then the brood must be stronger than one or two single laying workers. My two nuke's were the same age, was equal in every respect that I could tell. I continued to monitor the progress of both. Thinking they may develop laying workers, as soon as I noticed eggs in one and not the other, this is when I took action and added brood to one but not the other. Not being able to find the queen I let that one run it's course till some brood was capped. All drone.  By this time I had added the second frame of brood to the other hive. I will never know how the laying worker colony may have turned out had I started adding brood. but one can only do so much. One of the colonies I used brood from happened to be the third split, which had left the mother colony in a limited condition. Because of my action I now have 3 strong colonies where I started with one. I hope all of you that are working on this project find what you are looking for. But as I understand it once laying workers have gone so far, what is there to do. From this day on when I find eggs and can not find the queen there will be not be any action by me till there is capped brood, then if it is worker brood and I think the colony needs a boost  I might add some brood.  Good luck on your findings and hope they are good ones.  d2

[Michael Bush]

The details become much more apparent when you have watched the progression into laying workers many times and observed the changes over time.  At first there are no multiple eggs.  Just scattered (very scattered) larvae and if any of that is capped it has a dome on it.  There are also usually queen cells at this time, but they also have a dome cap on the end of the queen cell.  You may even see an egg somewhere but not the multiple eggs people think of.  This can happen as quickly as two weeks after there is no open brood.  At this point one frame of open brood will resolve things or you can even introduce a laying queen by any of the typical methods (candy cage, push in cage etc.).  If you give them open brood they will start viable queen cells and things will soon be fine.   The next stage is when the egg police cannot keep up at all anymore and there are dozens of eggs in some of the cells.  This is because there are now thousands of laying workers.  The problem the colony now faces is not a lack of queen pheromone, it is an overabundance of it confusing them so that they no longer try to raise a queen.  If queen pheromones would suppress laying workers this point would never have been reached because there would be some point of equilibrium where there was enough queen pheromones to suppress any more laying workers developing.  Three weeks of open brood is enough to suppress the laying workers and to get back to that level where they don't have that much queen pheromone and they now know that they need a queen and they also have the means to make one, so they do.

[drjeseuss]

The problem the colony now faces is not a lack of queen pheromone, it is an overabundance of it confusing them so that they no longer try to raise a queen.  If queen pheromones would suppress laying workers this point would never have been reached because there would be some point of equilibrium where there was enough queen pheromones to suppress any more laying workers developing.  Three weeks of open brood is enough to suppress the laying workers and to get back to that level where they don't have that much queen pheromone and they now know that they need a queen and they also have the means to make one, so they do.

This is an interesting point that they are overwhelmed by queen pheremone, which would certainly explain why they are SO QUICK to tear down queen cells at this point.  Now on the point of correction...  in terms of bee life (using averages), day 0 the egg is laid, then 21 days later emerges.  On day 42 this bee becomes a forager.  The bee dies at day 63.  This yields a forager that lasts 21 days (3 weeks).  If a forager becomes a laying worker immediately, this means it is only an issue for those 21 days.  I suspect older workers may also become layers and as result be laying for less than this time.  It's possible once moved to a laying role, they would live longer than a forager, but assuming they don't...  isolating these layers and waiting 3 weeks, you'd be down to a zero population.  Now, assuming the open brood would supress workers from becoming new laying workers, you've essentially isolated the laying workers, and again in 3 weeks, that population reaches zero.  This of course all relies on averages, and assumes a summer bee of shortest lifespan.

Does anyone know of any research done to verify if a laying worker actually ceases egg laying during it's lifetime once began, or if they simply die off?  As is nature, what happens in one hive may also not indicate what happens in another, so CaseyT's observations might be an overlooked norm, or may be unusual.  Surely this has been stiudied closely somewhere, but I can't find anything on it, other than the usual commentary that this is how it is, nothing showing that it was studied with control.  Also, does anyone know if there is a certain age bee that becomes a laying worker?  A young nurse bee, an older foraging bee, something between?

[Michael Bush]

Foragers have short lives.  Queens have been known to live 8 years... what makes you think a laying worker has the same lifespan as a forager?

[OldMech]

The details become much more apparent when you have watched the progression into laying workers many times and observed the changes over time.  At first there are no multiple eggs.  Just scattered (very scattered) larvae and if any of that is capped it has a dome on it.  There are also usually queen cells at this time, but they also have a dome cap on the end of the queen cell.  You may even see an egg somewhere but not the multiple eggs people think of.  This can happen as quickly as two weeks after there is no open brood.  At this point one frame of open brood will resolve things or you can even introduce a laying queen by any of the typical methods (candy cage, push in cage etc.).  If you give them open brood they will start viable queen cells and things will soon be fine.   The next stage is when the egg police cannot keep up at all anymore and there are dozens of eggs in some of the cells.  This is because there are now thousands of laying workers.  The problem the colony now faces is not a lack of queen pheromone, it is an overabundance of it confusing them so that they no longer try to raise a queen.  If queen pheromones would suppress laying workers this point would never have been reached because there would be some point of equilibrium where there was enough queen pheromones to suppress any more laying workers developing.  Three weeks of open brood is enough to suppress the laying workers and to get back to that level where they don't have that much queen pheromone and they now know that they need a queen and they also have the means to make one, so they do.

   Excellent post Michael. Thank you!

[drjeseuss]

Foragers have short lives.  Queens have been known to live 8 years... what makes you think a laying worker has the same lifespan as a forager?

Assuming a laying worker WAS a forager, the clock was already running.  I know once their role changes, so does their lifespan, so I couldn't say it would remain as short...  though I certainly wouldn't expect them to make it anywhere near that of a queen, and likely not even so long as a winter bee.

The foragers wouldn?t live long anyway, since they had already given up the bee ?fountain of youth??vitellogenin?when they switched jobs from being house bees to working as foragers (Seehus 2006).

As long as bees are loaded with vitellogenin, they can live for a long time?years as a queen, or for as much as ten months as ?winter bees? in the far north! However, when vitellogenin-rich house bees switch to foraging, they apparently feed their vitellogenin reserves back to the others, so as not to take unnecessary protein from the colony when they take on the risky job of foraging. Unfortunately, without vitellogenin reserves, they sacrifice much of their immune response, and free-radical scavenging ability, and thus begin aging (Amdam 2003).

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/old-bees-cold-bees-no-bees-part-1/

[don2]

Lets stop and look at this process of  grafting or queening a laying worker colony for any length of time until they make a queen. If brood is not added continually, then the hive dwindles away because no new bees are coming in, which keeps the hive population from expanding. At some point if the bees accepted a queen or queen cell, if brood had not been added, now that you have a queen with no bees what do you do? Add bees and brood.

I would think this operation is not for the average beekeeper. It would be good to know more about the situation of laying workers. So my conclusion is the open brood plays a big roll in the survival of the colony.The reason for this is because of what I have just experienced. The only thing I can do at this time for the failed nuke is to shake the few bees that are left off the frames, which have honey and pollen, give it to the good hive and mark it up as experience. Again, good luck on your findings.

I would not use anything out of the CCD world with this subject. It has no concern. Sorry.  d2

[Dallasbeek]

"Assuming a laying worker WAS a forager, the clock was already running.  I know once their role changes, so does their lifespan, so I couldn't say it would remain as short...  though I certainly wouldn't expect them to make it anywhere near that of a queen, and likely not even so long as a winter bee."

drjeseuss, are you saying that because their ovaries are no longer suppressed by queen and brood pheromones, they somehow acquire the attributes of a queen (ie, long life, an abundance of vitellogenin)?  I could be mistaken, but I don't think that follows.  Once they've given up the vitellogenin to become a worker, they have no way to regain it, as I understand what Randy Oliver has written on this subject, unless another bee feeds it back to them.  Maybe if a house bee (which still has a good store of vitellogenin) became a laying worker, then your theory might hold true.  Interesting thread this is.

[Dallasbeek]

Okay, if a brand new field bee became a LW, it wouldn't be subject to all the stresses field bees suffer that shorten the life of a worker once they leave the protection of the hive, so in that regard they'd have a longer life than a bee out there wearing out its wings.  In that regard, yes, they'd live longer.