[HesterF]

Having battled varroa through the winter (two x MAQs strips, oxalic acid), I opened the hives yesterday and one of them has a really odd brood pattern. Lots of drone brood, no worker and very few eggs. Also couldln't see the queen. My bee mentor/buddy came over and reckoned it could be a drone laying queen. She's only last year's queen - how common is it that queen's run out of sperm so early? Is there any chance it's just a blip and she'll settle down to normal laying soon? We agreed I'd leave it a week and see how the small area of eggs is looking by then and whether there is any sign of worker brood.

On the upside, the other queen is doing brilliantly - saw her in the midst of her colony with loads of perfect brood (which was enough to make me concerned about the other colony - if I'd just seen that one, I might have assumed It was a normal spring pattern0.

[P6te]

Hi HesterF,
My view is that it is more likely that you have lost the queen over the winter and you have laying workers. Workers can start to lay when a colony is rendered queenless but of course they can only lay infertile eggs - drone brood. The pattern of laying is normally sporadic, you will not see a regular laying pattern and often see more than one egg in some cells.
It is still early in the season but if your other colony is doing very well you could take a comb containing eggs from the (good) colony and place it in the midst of the 'queenless' colony and see if they draw out queen cells.
hope this helps.
Pete

[HesterF]

Thanks Pete. That was the first thought but my experienced guy thought the queen could still be there somewhere. The patch of eggs he found were well laid - single egg per cell over the whole area - and workers were fanning at the entrance when we reassembled the hive. It is still in question because we looked quite hard for her and did not find her but reluctant to try and requeen while it's in doubt.

Good thought about bringing in a frame of eggs from the other hive though - and by next week or the following week, they should be in an even stronger position. He suggested shaking out the whole hive over a sheet if we can't find her for sure - then destroying her if we do - but that's such a big job, I was hoping it'd all become clear whether she's there or not in the next couple of weeks.

[cloddopper]

I agre with Pete . egg laying workers .

Does the hive smell of fresh crushed nettles ?
Were the hive survivors more aggressive than the other hive?
If you leave it more than a few days to slip in a sealed brood frame your likely to lose the hive as by now the over wintered bees should be really healthy and you'd have at least a couple of frames of sealed brood .
 
 This year looks like it will be an early swarming one .. the earliest I had swarms was  the first noticed swarm issued on April the 10 th 1998 when I lived in East Anglia .

Usually the first cuckoo call of the year just beat the swarms which averaged to issuing on the 21 April

 By now I would have expected early swarming hives to be chock-a-block with pollen . uncapped honey inn the super & still some capped in the brood box  and loads and loads of well travelled well developed sealed brood with very few uncapped cells in them .

[P6te]

I should have added, if you put a comb with young eggs in and they do not start to draw down queen cells you can be pretty sure that there is a queen present.  If she has failed (lost ability to lay) but still present in the hive then they MAY not produce queen cells (because they know a queen is present). Either way it assists in planning your next move.
Pete

[HesterF]

Ah OK, so there's nothing to lose by moving a frame across.

I didn't smell any freshly crushed nettles but I don't have a great sense of smell at the best of times. What does that indicate? They were less aggressive than the other hive if anything. Neither hive is anywhere near as far on as you describe - they're still on double brood box and the top box is still full of honey from last year (quite a lot uncapped and crystallised). I was hoping to move them onto single brood and put the first super on but not sure now. Mind you, it only really stopped raining about a week ago so I'd be amazed if they were full of pollen already but they're pulling it in now.

H

[P6te]

Neither hive is anywhere near as far on as you describe - they're still on double brood box and the top box is still full of honey from last year (quite a lot uncapped and crystallised).

The fact there there is so much honey remaining may be an indication that the queen is not present.  What I mean is that it is in early spring that colonies die of starvation because they consume large quantities of stores when they need to raise the temperature for the brood. The fact that so much is remaining may be an indication that they have not been rearing brood on the scale that they would be with a laying queen present.

[HesterF]

Both hives are the same with stores. It was more that last year was their first year so I didn't take any honey off so they went into winter with both brood boxes stuffed with stores and then it's been such a mild winter, they were still foraging for quite a lot of it. Neither is raising brood on huge scales yet - the healthy hive has three frames of brood so far - so I'll leave the stores on there for now (hoping they will clean them up nicely too).

Bee teacher has also suggested taking eggs from the other hive (said to cut out a matching section from each frame rather than taking a whole frame though). I'll get in there again in the next couple of days and if there is still no sign of worker brood, I'll try moving eggs across. Sounds complex though.

H

[VEG]

Just move a frame with eggs in its less faff

[HesterF]

I have a plan! I'm going to leave it until Tuesday or sunniest day close (8 days after last week's check). Then I can check the eggs we saw last week and will know for sure whether she's drone laying 100% and I can also check the other hive to see if they can spare a full frame of eggs/brood. If they've still only got a few frames I won't risk weakening the second hive too so I'll have to do this cutting out business. If they're going strong with lots of brood, I can move a whole frame across much more easily.

Thanks all!

[cloddopper]

Re the crushed nettle smell .
The crushed nettle smell was one I associated with a declining queen . Some times it smells a bit like a dogs ear when it gets mites .
The bees are not cooperating in cleaning and keeping the hive fresh due to declining numbers .

[VEG]

I can honestly say my bees have never smelled of a dogs ear

[HesterF]

Wouldn't have a clue what a dog's ear with mites smells like anyway (but I have no regrets on that count!).

Update: I went back in this morning (smelling carefully - overriding smell of honey so no idea if there were any other 'tones' in there). The eggs from last week are all drones. So action required.

The other hive is doing really well with four frames completely full of brood in the bottom box and she's moved onto a fifth. She's also laid a few small patches in the top brood box (doh - now combining the two will be a pain). I found one which has a few young larva and a few eggs but mostly stores so I've moved that across to the other hive and put it next to the youngest drone brood frame. It felt like it would be the least disruptive frame to take from the healthy hive and I didn't see any big enough patches of eggs to go cutting them out. Now I guess I just have to wait with fingers and toes crossed for a week before I can check whether they've drawn out a queen.

I imagine the other main threat will be the timing. They'll be able to raise a few new workers from the frame I took across but not many so I just have to hope these older workers hang on long enough for the queen to develop, then mate, then start laying and for them to help raise the new workers. Which must be at least six more weeks, isn't it?

 

H

[cloddopper]

have a look in a weeks time they should have started drawing out one or more of the cells to make queens , don't wait six weeks to check for the hive might have died off whilst you could have prevented it happening.

 These transferred egg hives usually take off like a rocket if the weather is reasonable.
 Wrt the time from placing the eggs to new recruits at work .

 I can't fully remember it ( due to a stroke induced memory loss in certain areas such as numbers ) it should run like 3 days for capping and drawing to a closed queen cell .  15 days to hatch , mated and laying in five days add an other 15 days for the new stock to emerge and three days to establish the order of the hive . By then the queen will have been laying her own weight in eggs every day & this goes on till 21 September/early October ( the equinox ) when the daylight hours  start to change to much shorter ones .

[HesterF]

Thanks! I was planning to check next week whether it had worked re. Queen cell. But the six weeks is the bit you describe before I have new workers coming through in any number so I just have to hope the winter bees can hang on. I will continue to check it weekly,

H