What to do with a Drone laying queen?

[jb011a9840]

I bought a Nuc last March and over the year the colony grew and was looking really good but in August it decided to start producing queen cells.

Went through the process of moving the relevant frames into another hive and everything appeared to go well.
Both queens made it through the winter and I was looking forward to a year with 2 hives.

The original colony is looking great and thriving. However over the last month I’m become a bit suspect of the new queen,
there is loads of drone cells, drones and no sign of worker cells.

Any advice on what to do would be great, I would like to keep the 2 hives going.

Some photos are below

Cheers
Jamie

[gavin]

Hi Jamie

Yes, that is a colony with a drone laying queen. In many cases it would not be worth saving (and your strong one will likely give you the opportunity to fill the box again) but if it is strong then here is what to do:

- find and eliminate the drone laying queen. Not always easy.
- insert a piece of comb with eggs from your good colony. Just a strip is enough, cut out of a comb with a penknife
- make the sure the cells are pointing downwards with the comb jammed between two frame top bars
- wait!

I did this with a strong drone laying colony on April 19th and today I saw brood in there for the first time. It isn't really worth it if the box of bees isn't strong as a weak stock will not make a good queen and the colony will have only a declining population of old bees.

Otherwise shake out the bees on the grass some distance away and wait for the opportunity to split your other hive.

cheers

Gavin

[Adam]

The advantage of having two colonies is that you can kick-start one with the other if one fails. You could unite it with the strong one, add eggs/young brood so a queen can be raised or obtain a queen (local is best) and replace the failed queen. If the colony is strong enough, adding a complete frame of brood with the young adhering bees (a couple of jolts leaving the youngest ones on the comb) will give it a boost in bee numbers too. Something to consider is varroa as the colony may have high varroa numbers as it has been a good varroa-breeding ground - so perhaps treat with MAQS before-hand. The treatment is for just one week and you will have a varroa-free colony to start with.

[Jambo]

On this subject - can someone with the experience confirm if the comb from a drone layer is worth keeping? Once set up with a new queen will the bees restore the drone cells to worker ones?

As I understand it most of them will still be worker diameter anyway so logically the queen will measure a worker cell and put a fertilised egg in and the bees will have to shorten the cell and put a normal worker cap on it... But I've fallen foul of applying logic to bees before...