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Author Topic: Grafting to a laying worker nuc  (Read 13947 times)

Offline drjeseuss

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #20 on: May 26, 2015, 02:17:38 pm »
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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Offline GSF

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #21 on: May 27, 2015, 08:57:37 am »
Yall keep this conversation going, very interesting.
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Offline CaseyT

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #22 on: May 27, 2015, 11:38:29 pm »
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.

Offline drjeseuss

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #23 on: May 27, 2015, 11:51:33 pm »
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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Offline CaseyT

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #24 on: May 28, 2015, 02:55:21 am »
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.

Offline CaseyT

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #25 on: May 28, 2015, 10:14:02 pm »
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.


[Edit]
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.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2015, 10:34:36 pm by CaseyT »

Offline drjeseuss

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #26 on: May 29, 2015, 11:27:49 am »
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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Offline capt44

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #27 on: May 31, 2015, 01:21:58 pm »
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.
Richard Vardaman (capt44)

Offline Dallasbeek

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #28 on: June 01, 2015, 05:00:19 pm »
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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Offline Dallasbeek

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #29 on: June 01, 2015, 05:03:51 pm »
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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Offline don2

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #30 on: June 01, 2015, 10:21:15 pm »
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

Offline CaseyT

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #31 on: June 07, 2015, 02:10:15 am »
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.

Offline BeeMaster2

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #32 on: June 07, 2015, 07:15:51 am »
Thanks for the update Casey. Good info.
Jim
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Offline CaseyT

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #33 on: June 08, 2015, 03:47:02 am »
Thank you, sawdstmakr!  I hadn't previously seen any information along the lines of what I brought - I hope it proves useful to somebody.

Offline drjeseuss

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #34 on: June 08, 2015, 11:21:49 am »
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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Offline Dallasbeek

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #35 on: June 08, 2015, 11:37:50 am »
Sounds like a good plan, provided one has several hives.  Good thinking.
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Offline CaseyT

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #36 on: June 08, 2015, 08:33:51 pm »
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.

Offline little john

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #37 on: June 09, 2015, 03:34:13 am »
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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Offline Dallasbeek

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #38 on: June 09, 2015, 10:11:54 am »
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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Offline little john

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Re: Grafting to a laying worker nuc
« Reply #39 on: June 09, 2015, 10:36:26 am »
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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