How to Identify Laying Workers
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 มิ.ย. 2020
- How to Identify Laying Workers
In this video I show you how to identify laying workers.
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great video :) Laying Workers Solution
The correct test answer is use a newspaper combine with a strong queenright colony. The practical response is shake 'em out and put the equipment away. Several things to understand: You aren't "saving the colony" - the genetics are lost; your workers are over the hill and in the last half of their life (all the brood was hatched weeks ago); drones are not competetive in a DCA(Drone Congregation Area)
the lack of young replacement bees have allowed any diseases to easily become an issue; comb is pockmarked with drone cells (this tends to haunt you as future queens will lay into the available pattern). I shake them out in another yard as I don't like them drifting into a nuc.
Its funny isnt it how the textbook answer can become ingrained even when its not really a very good solution. Im not too fussed if they return to nucs as they soon lose the desire to lay when in the presence of a laying, mated queen.
What do you do with the frames once you shake them out?
What if you've done splits and your apiary has queenless colonies in it?
Same question!?
Good advice, thanks. I have a colony of around 7 frames currently which is hopelessly laying-worker. I don't want to combine them with another colony, though I have several others - don't want to risk the queens in those. Would you recommend letting them dwindle a bit before shaking them out, down to 2 or 3 frames? Or shake them out now? Good tip to take the stand away by the way - I have got that wrong in the past and found that they cluster on the stand.
Hi Matthew,
If you have numerous other colonies in the same apiary, just shake them out now. Those bees will revert to standard workers and boost the numbers in other colonies. If you let them dwindle they wont add anything to the apiary as a whole
That’s for sharing, what would you do with the frames afterwards? Is there any way of reusing them and not wasting the draw comb?
Depends how bad they are. If its just a few cells then just use them on the outer frames. If its the whole frame we use them for honey collection,
Thanks!
Great and informative video, thanks. How do you find all the time to do everything!
One of my swarms which arrived this April, just swarmed, ( i was not expecting this but it had very quickly grown) the swarm went into one of my bait hives, then whizzed off an hour later. I assume this was a prime swarm. I have since split the colony as there were queen cells in the brood box, hope this slows them down a bit. My bees seems to have little sleep, I expect you are the same. Regards Peter
Good question! I am struggling. Hope you are bees are doing the business!
How do u know when drone brood is layer into worker cells?
Quick informative and easy to follow. Thank you for the info.
Cheers Andrew. Glad you enjoyed it
What’s the difference if you have a drone laying Queen in terms of identifying and dealing with it
The only real difference in terms of identification is you get a visible siting of the queen and you dont always get multiple eggs in the cell. Drone laying queen can sometimes respond to killing queen and them adding frame of eggs. If they draw emergency cells, then you can pull down and add a mated queen/cell. If they ignore the eggs after being made queenless, I shake them out.
Black Mountain Honey been through the box three times now and no sign of the queen. I was requeening but wondered whether the virgin didn’t mate properly and she is now a drone layer. My understanding is a worker layer is all over the place no pattern etc ? Mine has a half decent pattern but it’s all drone brood. The hive wasn’t queen less that long before the drone laying started, around 35 days or so which is when I expected my new queen to start. Difficult I know for you to give a diagnosis off a post just trying to decide what I have.