- Hi there, we're here today to talk about
laying worker colonies. We've got one right here in front of us, so
we're gonna have a look at that. The background behind this colony is it was
a split that I made up and then I introduced a queen cell. Usually that works out, in this case it didn't. So the colony got into a hopelessly queen-less
situation. And what happens then, when there is no queen
present, her smell is gone and once all the brood hatches out, there's no brood smell
either, so there's actually a brood pheromone. Both of those smells inhibit the ovary development
in workers. When they're gone, worker ovaries start to
develop and the workers lay eggs. 'Course the workers haven't mated so those
eggs that they lay are drone eggs and so you get drones developed. It's basically the colony's last ditch effort
of expressing it's genes from an evolutionary perspective. These little drones that are reared in worker-size
cells are viable, they can fly out and mate. But the colony itself is on a downward spiral
and it will perish. We have the opportunity to do a few things
with the colony, we'll address those. So let's have a look first, we'll open up
the colony. And what I want to do is show you what the
brood looks like. Initially, when you get laying workers starting
to lay, all you have to look at is eggs and you'll see multiple eggs in cells, you'll
see eggs stuck to the side of the cells rather than nicely placed in the bottom. So that in itself looks different. But once the brood starts to develop, you'll
see cappings that look unusual. Everything looks a little unusual. It's not a very strong hive, we have bees
from about here to here. But the important thing is lookin' at the
brood here. So, we'll have a close look here. I see cappings here that are bulged out and
it's a very spotty brood pattern. Over in this area, you can see they're trying
to raise a queen. That will not be successful. It's actually a drone that's developing inside
that cell there, but they're trying their best to raise a new queen. And those cappings for the drones are kinda
bulged out from the side, and I'll just hold this steady here, so they're slightly bulged
out because they need to make a little extra space for that drone to fit in there. The eggs have been laid in worker sized cells,
so there's not quite enough room for the drone so they extend the length of the cell. Let's see what else we can find. Likely more of the same and I do see that. We can also see that there's not enough bees
to really care for this brood. So I see larva dying at different ages here
and it's generally a pretty unpleasant look. That frame's a good one to see those bulged
out cells there, there's not so many bees on there so we can see a little bit better. So those are the symptoms, but now the question
is what do we do with this? Because they don't have a queen, the first
inclination might be to introduce a queen to the colony, but a laying worker colony
will not accept a queen. So you're wasting a queen by trying to do
that. So the next option is to, and what we generally
do, is just unite the colony with another hive. If we unite that colony with another hive,
then the smell of the brood is present from the queen right colony and that shuts down
the laying workers. We can even then split that second box off
later and make up a second colony. But, we've shut down the laying workers by
adding it to a queen right colony. Another option is to just shake the bees out
in front of another hive, you just shake 'em out on the ground, ideally into a hive that's
nearby because the bees are gonna fly back to that location anyway. It doesn't help the colony a lot but it's
little bit of a help to the other colony and then we could take this comb home and store
it away. The risk there is wax moth. If you have this brood comb not being protected
by bees, if you're trying to store it, the wax moth can take over. So you have to either freeze it or store it
in a very cool location so wax moth won't develop. Another scenario is to introduce a nucleus
colony into this hive or to make up a split in the yard and introduce it into the colony. If you're going to be doing that, shake the
bees out from the laying worker colony some distance away from the hive, 15, 20 feet away
from the hive. The laying workers will not actually be able
to fly home and so they won't interfere with the acceptance of the queen that's in the
split or the nuc that you're putting into that colony. We're gonna go back to our first scenario,
which is my favorite, and we're going to introduce or rather, unite this colony with a queen
right colony. And so, let's go through that process here. So we'll move over to the queen right colony
next door. And whenever you're moving a colony to unite
it, I always move the weak hive to the location of the strong hive, that way you're not losing
forager bees from the strong colony. It's okay to lose a few worker bees from the
weaker of the two colonies, so that's the rational behind moving the weak one to the
location of the strong one. So we've got a queen excluder on there and
we're gonna take that off. This is going to become a double brood chamber
colony. And we're going to lay down a sheet of newspaper
on top of that. And cover that up, stick it down a little
bit there. One thing that works well is if you find which
side the wind is coming from, and lay your hive tool down on there, that'll prevent the
paper from blowing out of your way when you're shifting the box. That always seems to blow away just when you
go to set that other box in place. But I need that for a second to pry this free,
okay, we'll set our hive tool down there. And now, we're just shifting this box over. We'll slip out our hive tool. We'll put our queen excluder back on. And then we'll put our super back in place. Now what we have happening here, we have our
queen down here. The worker bees from below and from above
will chew through that newspaper and it's a gradual introduction of the queenless bees
to the queen right colony. Once those laying worker bees smell brood
and the queen, they will stop laying eggs and everything normalizes within the colony. As I mentioned previously, this box could
then be split off later to make up another colony. We're at the middle of July right now, so
it's getting to late in the year to be splitting colonies, so this one will stay like this. It'll over winter as a double brood chamber
hive and we'll split it off next time. You might be wondering about the bees in this
top super that came from this hive here, there's no issue with a queen acceptance here because
there is no queen up in this area, so those bees will merge together. Newspaper will chew out and everything normalizes. Just a few little ways of dealing with laying
worker colonies. Thanks for watching, see you next time.
