Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS => Topic started by: drjeseuss on May 13, 2015, 11:37:54 am
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I have a few nucs that were split from a full hive. All four made queens, but only one made it to laying. One emerged w/ a bad wing, and two disappeared around mating time, likely bird food now. I pulled the laying queen and combined in the bees from one of the other nucs. Now, the remaining two continued to work tirelessly, and eventually turned to laying worker. Now that I'm there, I've heard a few strong opinions... shake them out and move on is most popular. Next up is to add frames of brood until they stop laying and make their own real queen, two to three weeks to start that. Now to my own observations and curiosity. I've noticed every few days they seem to try making an emergency cell from one of their drone eggs. Of course this doesn't work, but it seems to me they want a queen. This in mind, if I give them a few newly grafted cells, are they likely to feed them and finish them out, or will they terminate that before the process can complete? I've read it both ways, but I'm thinking in terms of behavior... while they think they have a queen, wouldn't they also see her as a failing queen since all eggs are drone, and want to supercede her? In this case, wouldn't the main body of workers carry on this process just as they would in a queenright hive where the queen is old or otherwise failing? If not, what's the hangup? When these are torn down, is that the laying worker removing competition or the general population removing unnecessary replacement? For sake of time, I'd like them to take and finish a grafted cell... failing that I think I'll shake and replace.
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It's fascinating to me that you post this very topic today! This is the very reason why I joined the forum today in the first place!
I have an observation hive that I started from my main hive, probably about four weeks ago. I was purposely doing this as a way to raise a new queen and essentially create a split, while allowing my young kids the learning opportunity of having the observation hive in the house. The first attempt did not yield a queen attempt as the bees only clustered on the frame of capped brood, rather than the frame of young brood. After a week and the young brood dying and turning rancid, I removed that frame and replaced with another frame of young brood, and lots more bees. This time the cluster was large enough to cover both frames adequately and they started half a dozen emergency cells. The queen emerged over this past weekend and appears healthy and in good shape.
However, about two-three days ago, I noticed a worker that the bees responded differently to and I began to suspect that I had developed a laying worker. Last night, I was able to confirm that she is a laying worker as I observed her laying an egg. Interestingly, for a brief moment, both the virgin queen and the laying worker came into contact and the queen made some brief move toward the worker but the worker moves around the hive so quickly that I could not observe what the queen intended to do with the contact.
I have not previously run into any literature or anecdotal accounts of how the hive, queen, or laying worker will interact and what the outcome will be in these cases. So, it goes without saying, that I'm fascinated to see how this situation will resolve. The laying worker is apparently an older bee, as she is quite bald, and I have no idea if her age has played into her reproductive development. The worker appears to have completely ignored the presence of the virgin queen, so I'm curious as to whether they recognize each other as queens and whether this will have an impact on the queen's mating process and subsequent interaction.
Unfortunately, our weather here is forecasted to be poor mating weather through this coming weekend, so I am very hopeful that the weather will turn in time for her to mate appropriately so that I can observe the outcome. Will the pheromones from the mated queen revert the worker's reproductive system to the inactive state? Will they fight for dominance? Will they continue to lay side by side until ultimately one of them dies naturally (likely the worker)? The queen did appear to kill the other queens in their cells, and those cells have been torn down for the most part, so I suspect that the hive is not viewing this as a swarming opportunity.
I suspect that in my case, the laying worker developed or was developing as the queens were still in their capped cells. As such, I would suspect that in your case, the hive would raise and care for grafted queen cells appropriately. If you do accomplish a graft, I would be fascinated to learn the results. Best of luck!
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Stumped. d2
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In my nucs, one had a fresh frame of brood put in last week so I hoped it would raise the grafts. The other was laying worker longer. Sadly, when I checked today, both nucs have licked the cells clean. I lost faith that they can be helped, so I shook one out, and will do the other tomorrow. I'll refill both with new stock and grafts this weekend.
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It would be interesting to see what may happen if you put a capped queen cell into the nuc. But then, I suppose, that essentially gets you to where I am. I'll keep you posted on my outcome.
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I've read a laying worker hive will think it is queenright and will tear down cells and ball queens added. Where I'm stumped is that laying workers seem to attempt to build emergency cells (which won't work since they are all drones), yet won't easily take grafts, cells, or new queen. I've also read that most hives will have a few laying worker all the time, but low number kept in check by other workers and queen... Much higher count in a laying worker hive. CaseyT, I suspect you spotted an oddball and that once you're virgin's mated and laying you'll be fine. I hope to have my observation hive made before June.
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>Where I'm stumped is that laying workers seem to attempt to build emergency cells (which won't work since they are all drones), yet won't easily take grafts, cells, or new queen.
This is a matter of timing. Early in the laying worker digression they will start queen cells. At that point you could give them a frame of brood and they will start queen cells. You can even introduce a queen and they will accept her. It's only later in the process that there are enough laying workers generating enough small amounts of queen pheromones that they accumulate enough to think they are queenright. At this point they will neither start queen cells, nor accept a queen. Only when you have suppressed enough of those laying workers with open brood will they start to be open to making a queen or accepting a queen.
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These nucs have been queenless going on 6 weeks now and have been laying long enough that drones are nearly emerging (purple eye). I've noticed in the past two weeks that they've drawn cells off the bottom and face of the comb into emergency cells several times (about 8-10 cells total), then about 2-3 days into that process they pull the larvae and tear the cell down. Is this disagreement among the workers and the layers? Maybe the cells are started by workers drifting from another hive that are not yet in agreement with the slight hint of pheremones?
On the same topic... as the workers lay, wouldn't their own brood give off pheremone that would suppress their own drive to lay... maybe in cycles? This might allow a brief window when things quiet down and they start emergency cells, only to be thwarted by the layers picking back up.
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As soon as the bees determine that it is not a viable female they remove it.
Drones larvae do not suppress laying workers. Only worker bee larvae do that.
Jim
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Any idea what happens to grafted cells then, as these would be viable for queening? Do the layers assasinate them, or do the other workers perceive no need and remove them for resource conservation? As I see QCs built out in queenright hives through completio, I don't see why a LW colony would treat them any different... though in queenright hives, I'd imagine they only allow this for swarm or supercedure, not just whenever they feel like it. In a LW colony though, shouldn't the non-laying workers be irritated by the failing 'queens' due to the 100% drones and WANT to supercede them in any way possible (such as taking a graft)? This certainly didn't work out for me (tried only once), but I don't see why not.
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May be the laying workers are putting just enough queen cent to tell them they are queen right. d2
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>On the same topic... as the workers lay, wouldn't their own brood give off pheremone that would suppress their own drive to lay... maybe in cycles?
Like Jim said... worker brood is what is needed.
>May be the laying workers are putting just enough queen cent to tell them they are queen right.
Once there are enough of them...
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Just an update on this. After failing to produce queens, my mating nucs wouldn't get back in gear (in short time), so I shook them out. After a few days I pulled brood frames from a swarmy hive to rebuild 4x 2-frame nucs. I left them for a few hours until they started to roar, then grafted cells. My previous attempt at grafting was only about 40% accepted (though all were lost due to a mis-step of mine after). This attempt was 75% accepted (6 of 8). I consider this amazing considering the conditions!
I have a habit of making things harder than they need to be. I had a schedule set out and decided I needed the grafts in Sat or Sun this past weekend. The forecast for Sat was spotty showers, and Sun was full day rain and storms. I decided then I HAD to do things Sat. I pulled the brood frames in the morning (around 10am) during a light mist. The bees were flying and didn't seem to mind. The hives are under tree cover, so they weren't really getting hit from this. The day cleared up a while and after lunch, I pulled my donor frame and grafted cells. I cut strips of pollen patty for the nucs and prepped syrup w/ HBH to keep them going strong as they build out the QCs. Just as I started to place the cells into each nuc it began to rain a bit. I leaned over the nuc to keep them from the direct rain, though they were still taking on water. By the third nuc it went into a full downpour! I knew I had to get these closed up, but also didn't want to toss the new grafts, so I rushed to drop the cells between top bars so I could just go. They got more water in them than I'd like in the process, and the patties were starting to melt in the rain. Disaster! Sunday provved the weather man to be wrong by being warm and sunny, a good flying day. I pulled open the nucs to see just how bad it was. The cells were being tended to and drawn out, even those sitting across top bars. I carefully pressed each good cell (6 of 8) into a depressing in each frame. The bees were enjoying the softer patties and eating them at a pace I've never seen before. This may be a new technique for me (moistened patties, not grafting in the rain!) I was glad to see there were only a couple dead bees in the nucs, not handfuls as I had feared.
I hope I never have such an experience again, but it did show me that while sensitive, the grafting process is far more tolerant than I had ever understood from any book or forum post! For anyone that hasn't tried it, it's not that scary. :) Also worth mentioning, I have a chinese grafting tool that works so-so for me, but I've found better luck using a paperclip with the end flattened and slightly curved. I now use the chinese tool occasionally to gently push larvae off the clip, though usually this is not necessary. Also, any time I find queen cells I remove them and collect the jelly, putting it in a glob in a bottle cap which goes into the freezer. When grafting, I let one of these warm, and moved a small amount to each JZBZ cell cup prior to grafting, not so much to cover the bottow, but around 60-75% covered, and deep enough that the flattened paperclip could dip into it a bit. While grafting, this allowed the larvae to easily 'float' off the tool. I suspect though that my failures might be due to sticking on the tool, causing them to dip too deep in the jelly.
For those that graft a lot, I've always ready to use just the tiniest minimum in the bottom of the cup. In my experience, this was not the case. Since using jelly, wouldn't it give them a head start to feeding the cell? Also, might it be possible to go even further, filling the cup half way or more, giving the larvae all the food it needs, with the bees only needing to cap the cells?
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Just an update on my situation.
The weather actually broke last week and it appears that the queen was able to fly on Thursday, as the bees began responding to her more and more throughout the afternoon/evening as they do to a mated queen. Due to frame coverage in the observation hive, I am unable to see egg pattern in the cells, however, I did witness the queen laying last night. So I consider it a successful mating flight as we are well within two weeks of her emerging.
The same worker is still in the hive and still appears to be eliciting a queen response from surrounding workers. I have been unable to witness her actually laying recently, but I suspect that she still is. Interestingly, her abdomen appears distended and certainly elongated. However, if I didn't know what she was, it would look very similar to a bee engorged with honey. She appears to not do any work within the hive as I only ever see her sitting around placidly, or conducting rapid and erratic movements throughout the hive. I believe the rapid and erratic movement is when she is preparing to lay an egg, and I would almost wonder if she begins experiencing pain as the egg is ready to lay. She appears to begin by inspecting cells at random and then finally, it seems almost in panic, she lays an egg. This might explain why laying workers have such a poor egg pattern, often with several eggs in a cell.
Since it appears, at least for the time being, that the queen and worker are continuing to lay side by side, this brings up another question for me. Since laying workers do not seem to be concerned with multiple eggs in a cell, I can guess that there would occur the circumstance where the queen might lay an egg in the bottom of a clean cell and then the worker(s) might lay additional egg(s) in the cell. Are the bees then able to distinguish which eggs are worker brood and which eggs are drone brood, and cull the eggs appropriately? Perhaps if they do cull the eggs appropriately, it is also possible that it is merely by chance due to the fact that the queen will generally lay on the bottom of the cell while the worker can't always reach to the bottom, so the drone eggs (by default) might be the ones culled just because they are the first ones reached by the nursery workers.
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Regarding the worker laying in and fouling up a cell the queen already laid in, I've wondered the same.
I'm jealous and hope to get my observation hive done soon so I can get it populated, hopefully well before summer dearth .
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Last night, I watched both the worker and the queen laying. The queen seems to be ramping up and laying in a fairly tight pattern. It's pretty hard to quantify, but it's possible that the other bees were not responding quite as much as previously with the laying worker. I still can't visualize inside the cells due to coverage of the frame by the bees.
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I've managed to stay out of my grafts so far. Today I looked in on a few without touching the QC frame at all and being very gentle otherwise. The cells are well drawn and capped (yesterday I believe), with a full cup of jelly visible at the top. If they all made it to this stage I'll have 6 ready to emerge Thursday.
I made sure each frame only got one cell each. They are all in 2-frame compartments of a queen castle. Wednesday the cells should be safe to handle a bit. Hating to see any go to waste, I've considered splitting the compartments that have 2 cells on Wednesday. Would this be spreading them too thin? I've considered I could pull emerging brood from another hive to boost each new split, though I also don't want to overtax my donor. My goal this year is increase so I want to keep every queen I can. Would cutting them back to one frame weaken them to much to make it, even with feeding? If their mother is any indicator I think they'll lay like mad this year, but I worry about the time until that pays off. I don't want to lose them to robbing during summer dearth. Any suggestions to get the most from what I have?
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If you seen the worker laying pinch her head.
That will end the problem and the queen can go on laying.
There is a process to go thru to get rid of a laying worker.
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Capt, I am allowing the situation to play out as I'm curious as to the natural outcome in this case. The queen appears to be laying a strong, tight pattern, so I don't see the laying worker as a threat at this point. But if it actually comes down to it, I can find her and destroy her if I need to.
In any event, I did see the worker on Friday night still getting queen-like attention. I also briefly saw a cell getting capped with a drone cap. It doesn't surprise me that the first cap I see is drone, as the laying worker appeared to be active possibly even before the queen emerged. I'm anxious to see how much of the open brood eventually drone caps vs. worker caps.
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Capt,
Most hive that go queenless and end up with laying workers have numerous laying workers. Not just one. I do not think it would do much good to remove just one.
Jim
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I made sure each frame only got one cell each. They are all in 2-frame compartments of a queen castle. Wednesday the cells should be safe to handle a bit. Hating to see any go to waste, I've considered splitting the compartments that have 2 cells on Wednesday. Would this be spreading them too thin? I've considered I could pull emerging brood from another hive to boost each new split, though I also don't want to overtax my donor. My goal this year is increase so I want to keep every queen I can. Would cutting them back to one frame weaken them to much to make it, even with feeding?
My queens will be emerging Thursday. I'm still at odds about what would be best to do? Keep 4 and certainly lose the extra 2, or split the frames down to singles and hope for all 6. I don't want to weaken things so much that robbing wipes them all out, but I'd really like to keep all 6 queens if possible. I'm also thinking maybe I can cut out just the QC and move into 2 new nucs I make ready today. Any suggestions on how I can get the most out of these without too much risk?
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Yall keep this conversation going, very interesting.
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I hadn't been able to find my laying worker since my previous post, but just found her again this evening. She is still receiving a queen response and her abdomen still appears elongated.
I can see open brood covering most of a full frame with a solid egg pattern (single egg, bottom of cell) on about 25% of the frame. A very few of the cells have worker capped, but this pattern is spotty, which is not unexpected with a new queen. I cannot locate any cells that I can definitively say are drone capped, though there are possibly a couple.
While it's still too early to say that the laying worker hasn't been able to get some drone brood to maturity, it certainly appears that she will end up being a very minor issue for the hive.
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Yet again my bees remind me who runs things in the bee yard. I went out to see how the queen cells looked and to be sure I still had six. My first nuc had two QCs. They were both chewed through the side, though elsewhere on the frame they had about five emergency cells, second nuc, same story, third has one of the two remaining but also many emergency cells. The fourth nuc kept their only graft with no emergency cells. In going to let this play out as is.
Any idea why they would abort the grafts well after capping only to make emergency cells instead? This certainly would add to the brood gap for the hive, so they've only hurt themselves I think.
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drjeseuss, it is interesting to note that when I started my observation hive, I had one emergency cell that started 3-4 days before several others. Then after the cell had been capped, the bees tore it down. The remainder emergency cells were all the same age. With similar information from your story, I wonder if the bees work towards having all emergency cells of the same age.
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An additional notation on my story: a significant portion of the open brood has capped today. With the exception of one possible drone cap that has possibly been caved in slightly, all caps appear to be worker brood. I witnessed the worker laying and have yet to see any significant amount of drone brood (outside of the possible single one). This makes me suspect that whether by accident or design, the bees removed drone eggs/larva and allowed worker brood to develop.
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Although, as I think about this further, I believe that the evidence points to a purposeful removal of drone brood. While I was unable to witness her laying any eggs until after the queen had emerged, I had located the worker earlier and witnessed the queen response from surrounding workers. This leads me to believe that she had started laying before or near the time that the queen emerged and has likely laid a not insignificant amount of drone eggs between the time she started and now.
We know that a queen will not lay an egg in a cell already containing an egg, hence, eggs that had been laid by the worker would have remained inviolate as far as the queen is concerned. Left alone, this would produce an interspersed pattern of drone brood and worker brood (this patter would exist, assuming that the worker laying on top of the queen's egg would not preclude development of the worker brood). And, in fact, I should have seen drone brood capping several days before any worker brood capping.
Because this is not in evidence, it appears to me that the bees recognized that they were queen-right with a fertile queen laying productive worker brood and then diligently removed all drone eggs/larva for the queen to then lay worker eggs. While the bees have not appeared to take any direct action against the worker (making me wonder if they recognize the difference in the two bees), they have apparently taken direct and decisive action against the non-productive drone brood and have fostered the development of the worker brood.
At this point, I feel satisfied that the situation has come to a fascinating resolution and that further observation will reveal little further. I will likely hive this observation hive in a standard hive within the coming week and consider the situation resolved. It is obvious at this point that the continued existence of the laying worker is of little to no impact to the hive and I expect that she will likely end up dying naturally.
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CaseyT, nice notes on your observations! I'd think what you've seen would support the fact that a laying worker hive is generally many laying workers an not just one, thus making the problem quite difficult to overcome. With many laying, even if one straightened out, the others would remain and continue to foul the broodnest with drone eggs. The task to clean this up would become daunting for the other workers who might never stay ahead of it until the laying population decreased. I also find it interesting to see that the laying worker seems to continue to do so even with a queen in place. This lends the insight that clearing laying workers may be through attrition (death) and not directly from them reverting back to workers. The introduction of brood may not correct the layers, but simply prevent any more from starting to lay, as the clock runs out for those that are laying. Interesting indeed!
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I was implying that he said he could find the laying worker which I can't do.
I always tear the hive apart and shake the bees out in the grass a hundred or so yards away and set the hive back up.
But when I put a queen cell in a hive I always use a protective cage so the sides can't be torn out and the queen killed.
She will emerge into the hive and nature will take it's course then.
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I can't imagine the workers removing drone eggs/brood, simply because bees want a good percentage of drones. I can't feature the workers caring whether drones eggs/brood came from a laying worker or from a queen choosing to lay an unfertilized egg (drone). My reservations about the above hinge on laying workers laying eggs in worker cells instead of drone-size cells. Capt44, what are your thoughts on that?
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Notwithstanding my previous comment, I think the better view was expressed by capt44 -- shake the bees off. The workers will return, but the laying workers are not in flying condition and you'll be rid of them and the possible threat they pose to your queen
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Queens lay drone eggs in drone cells. The workers will remove any egg or larvae that they believe to be inferior, which would say a drone larvae in a worker cell would be so. All the drones that emerged in my laying worker nuke was just a little larger than half the size than a queens drone, not much bigger if any than the workers. I could only tell the difference by color.
What I think happened in your case is they got a queen just at the right time and every one considers the laying worker/s insignificant. So she or they will eventually fade away. If the bees have not already balled the queen and killed her, then it looks like things are going to be O K. d2
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As a final follow-up, I had not seen the worker in about a week, but saw her again last night. While I did not see her laying, she was still receiving a queen response from surrounding bees. The queen is laying very prolifically and has a frame and a half of brood. The middle frame of my three-frame observation hive is completely full of capped brood - I can only locate one possible drone cap in a worker cell and no actual drone cells apparent. The hive population is dwindling some (as expected), but my first bees should be emerging before too long and the queen is active, healthy, and pleasantly elongated. I suspect that don2 is correct that timing just happened to work out perfectly, and I also wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I have only ever been able to locate a single laying worker. Perhaps the hive had not completely turned to a laying worker hive because the emergency cells were plenty far along.
Given my experience with this hive, I also suspect that a protected queen cell introduced into a laying worker hive as discussed by capt44 might be enough to eventually rectify the situation without even shaking out the hive. It would be interesting to conduct an experiment to explore this, or even hear from others that might have attempted this. Shaking a hive can be quite disruptive, especially since many of the newly emerged bees will never make it back. So if we were able to determine that it was unnecessary, that would probably prove to be quite useful.
And, to capt44, to your point about not being able to find the laying workers, I discussed this briefly in one of my earlier posts. Really, the only reason I was able to find and figure out what she was is because I initially saw the queen response from surrounding bees. While one could probably take a significant amount of time tearing through every last frame of the hive, and possibly find a few of the laying workers this way, I doubt you would find all of them. This is at least in part due to the fact that there were times when I watched my laying worker scrambling erratically around the hive too quickly for surrounding bees to give her a queen response. As an interesting side note to this paragraph, if I were given a small-ish group of bees and told that one or more are laying workers and asked to identify them, I might be able to. But this would probably take fairly close examination, and I don't know that I would correctly identify each bee in the group since she looked little different than an engorged bee. One of the things that I noticed was it appeared that the abdomen wasn't completely smooth and perhaps had a couple of bumps under the chitin on the anterior side - I described this as "distended" in my previous post. But again, I agree that finding these things in a full hive with bees everywhere, would be quite difficult as the differences are subtle.
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Thanks for the update Casey. Good info.
Jim
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Thank you, sawdstmakr! I hadn't previously seen any information along the lines of what I brought - I hope it proves useful to somebody.
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I thought long about the laying worker problem, and decided it would be a mature bee that's laying, and not a young bee. If I shook them out, I felt I'd loose the nurse bees, get back the foragers, and likely the laying workers also. I know some say they can't get back, but I've read others to say they'll fly back no different than any other forager. The only possible reason they might not return would be if a laying worker does not fly often enough to have oriented within their 3-day memory span. Even still, the loss of a large portion of the hive (the nurses) would be a hard hit... So instead, I took a different approach when I "shook" mine out. I had another hive that had recently produced a queen that had started laying very well about a week before. I took the frames out of the laying worker nuc (2 frames) and sat them next to the nuc. I also closed off the entrance on the nuc. The young bees stayed put, while many bees began to fly off the combs and back to the nuc, collecting at the entrance. After several minutes, and no additional signs of bees moving back I took the frames with remaining bees (mostly nurse bees I figure) and added the frames to my newest queenright nuc. I placed them between existing frames in that hive to thoroughly mix the population. The queenright hive had a fair population, and the new frames didn't even fight, all so far so good. I closed them up, then waited about an hour. The 'lost' foragers began drifting to other nucs nearby. No problem there either. By the next day, no more 'lost' bees. This means the laying workers ended up somewhere in a queenright box. I watched all the nucs closely, but none of them ever had and drones in worker cell, or other signs of laying workers. So, rather than a shake-out, it's also easy enough to just split them out to other stronger hives to outnumber them sufficiently to clear the issue. No loss of population, just a reorg. :)
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Sounds like a good plan, provided one has several hives. Good thinking.
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I didn't have hours upon hours to observe my hive throughout the day, so I can't say whether my laying worker was coming or going. I can say that I never saw her doing any meaningful work in the hive, but as I stated in an earlier post, she does appear to be an older, mature bee. However, I didn't see anything about her size that would indicate to me that she was incapable of flying. My suspicion is that even when shaken out, the laying worker would be able to make it back - but of course, the young bees would not.
I like your idea of a re-org, so as to not lose existing population, but of course, you lose a hive. I think I also like capt44's idea of introducing a caged queen cell so that it is protected from destruction. Assuming this works well, you wouldn't lose the hive and you save existing population.
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I think I also like capt44's idea of introducing a caged queen cell so that it is protected from destruction.
One of the little tid-bits I picked up whilst researching pheromones recently. was that eggs don't produce any pheromone themselves, but are coated with a 'recognition pheromone' as they leave the laying bee. Thus - the pheromone coating the queen bee's eggs will be different from those coating the worker bee's eggs.
But - the bees need a reference from which to make a comparison - and unless they have a queen bee's egg to use as that reference, then they'll accept the worker bee's eggs as being 'the genuine article'.
So - it would seem the best solution would indeed be to get a viable queen into the hive using some means of protection. Then (assuming acceptance) once she has started laying, the bees will then have the 'reference' pheromone they need in order to make decisions.
As queen bees get older, they produce less of that 'recognition pheromone', and presumably non-fertilised queens produce the same as workers (I haven't actually read that, but it would seem to follow), which would explain why the workers persist with, what is after all, their colony-destructive activity.
It would also appear that newly hatched larvae do not produce brood pheromone at first, which is why older larva - although less desirable for queen-rearing purposes - are more readily accepted when moving them across into a cell-building hive.
The hive is indeed a world of smells ...
LJ
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Go back and read Michael Bush's comments earlier in this string. I think he's saying BROOD, not a caged queen, is what needs to be introduced to overcome the laying workers. He has at great length detailed the thinking on this in another topic related to this. Whether it's a nuc or a 10-frame hive, it's all the same. I may be missing something in this string, but I don't think that's the case.
Little John, I do think your comments about pheromones are very informative, but I believe what MB said is the real answer in this discussion.
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Dallasbeek - as I understand it (could have this wrong of course ...) the desire here is not to simply 'fix' this problem using a tried-and-tested method, but to try introducing a queen and see how that plays out - as a kind of experiment, I guess - by trying somethng new.
LJ
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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.
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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. :)
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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 ....?"
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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.
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>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
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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
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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.
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>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.
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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!
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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!
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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/
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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
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"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.
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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.
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I believe this would be correct, that once they give up the Vg, it's gone and they would age as any other forager, minus the strains of the wild outside the hive. I wonder if they may get back any Vg when fed as a queen, if they are in fact fed this way. Per Oliver's articles on the subject, a winter bee had a long life when it has not raised brood, and winter bees that have been exposed to brood pheromones had shorter lives. This would certainly apply to the typical laying worker, meaning they likely would not have a significantly longer life than an average forager. Does this make sense or have I overlooked something?
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I think that's correct except that they would not have the wear and tear of foraging, so would live longer.
I've read that bees' wings get tattered and worn and that when the bee can no longer function efficiently, they may even commit "benevolent suicide" by just crawling away to die. I have observed bees crawling near my hives and when I've tried to get them to fly, they resist and continue walking away from the hive.
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Dallas,
The next time you SE a bee walking away from your hives, pick it up and take a good look at it. I think you will find that it is a young bee with no sign of tattered wings and probably it will still have most of its hair. This is a sign of a sick bee. They leave the nest to protect the hive from getting what ever they have.
Your old bees keep on flying on their tattered wings until they get out in the field, get a full load of nectar and cannot fly home due to the extra weight.
Jim
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Dallas,
The next time you SE a bee walking away from your hives, pick it up and take a good look at it. I think you will find that it is a young bee with no sign of tattered wings and probably it will still have most of its hair. This is a sign of a sick bee. They leave the nest to protect the hive from getting what ever they have.
Your old bees keep on flying on their tattered wings until they get out in the field, get a full load of nectar and cannot fly home due to the extra weight.
Jim
Okay, that makes sense. Thanks