# Question about drone laying queen



## Dave Burrup (Jul 22, 2008)

No


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

A queens window of opportunity is around 20 days after emergence. after that it is a no deal. Drone layers = swarm lure.


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## Billboard (Dec 28, 2014)

If a queen lays some drone, is that normal? She lays about 10% drone 90% worker bees.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

If the drone larvae are in drone cells, it's normal. If they are in worker cells the queen has a problem and will worsen till it fails or goes total drone layer, this generally does not take too long.

If this is the case the hive can be requeened in the normal way if that is what you choose to do, just remove the drone layer queen when you install the new queen.


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## blamb61 (Apr 24, 2014)

I have a queen laying 100% drone. I will check again this weekend and if stll same, she gets squished.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

If it's laying 100% drone she will never improve.

In such cases, if the hive is full of drone brood, when I remove the queen I also run my hive tool over the brood combs to kill the larvae. The bees eventually clean them out. Otherwise when they all hatch they are worthless and there can be enough of them to have a detrimental effect on the hive.


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## Billboard (Dec 28, 2014)

The drone my queen is laying the comb is bigger I noticed a size difference just by looking at the comb. So she's good then huh.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Yup, totally normal.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Will a drone laying queen that didn't get mated go out and make another try at getting mated?

I know it is contrary to current popular opinion, but in my experience a queen that has not mated never lays at all. This becomes obvious when they have damaged wings and they can't mate and they never lay. Drone laying queens are queens who mated late or who ran out of sperm. No, a drone laying queen will never get properly mated as her problem is that she was mated too late in the first place. She will not try it again and it would not succeed because she took too long in the first place.


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## blamb61 (Apr 24, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> >Will a drone laying queen that didn't get mated go out and make another try at getting mated?
> 
> I know it is contrary to current popular opinion, but in my experience a queen that has not mated never lays at all. This becomes obvious when they have damaged wings and they can't mate and they never lay. Drone laying queens are queens who mated late or who ran out of sperm. No, a drone laying queen will never get properly mated as her problem is that she was mated too late in the first place. She will not try it again and it would not succeed because she took too long in the first place.


I bought the queen new as a mated queen but it looks she is a dud.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Sometimes they get mated late because of weather and sometimes they get cages as virgins and when they finally get to mate it's too late.


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## blamb61 (Apr 24, 2014)

I think I made an incorrect assessment. I think I had laying workers.

17 march-walk away split. Didnt make sure young brood on both sides. 2 deeps for each hive.
19 april - inspection. Didnt see any capped cells. Didnt look for eggs (my mistake).
20 april - installed queen. Not lot of bees interested in her. Ones interested seemed little agressive compared to another queen I installed in a different hive. I released queen.
02 may- full inspection. Tons and tons of drone capped cells. No worker Capped cells.
09 may - full inspection. Lots of drones hatched. Watched some comming out of capped cells. Less than 20 days since queen installed and they are hatching, hence laying workers I think. Looked hard for eggs, only sayw very few and large pupa, made me think laying workers have died out. Lots of hatched drones in hive. Original workers from split should be dead by late may.

I think I will shake all off in soapy water to kill all of them, put in frame of capped brood with nurse bees and install mated queen. Any suggestions? Could still have laying workers but whatever is laying isn't laying much now.
thanks


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

I went into a hive that has been traditionally a boomer and found drones above the excluder. I thought it was odd but found another 15+ frames of drones. Next day I uncapped every single cell with a decapping fork and tried to get as much of that varroa magnet out of the hive as possible, what a mess. I shook the entire hive out and dropped in a laying queen from a queen castle and used newspaper to separate them. It was odd how it turned from excellent to crap so quickly. Never did find the queen (if there was one). I will let you know if it was a bust or not.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Blamb61 I think your assessment is correct, but what you are going to do about it may not be the best plan.

Based on the time line, it's too quick for a drone laying queen to start bearing in mind drones are 25 days from egg top adult, unless there was a pre existing drone laying queen but odds of that are low if you didn't know about her. For laying workers to develop also takes a while so yes, your split was probably made with no unsealed brood.

If you put unsealed brood in the hive it still takes several weeks for those laying workers to be suppressed back to normal workers so just putting brood in once is not enough, you have to do it once a week for several weeks before there is any chance an introduced queen would not be killed. Considering all things including work, hassle, and risks, your best plan would be to combine this hive with a good one, leave a few weeks till all is normalised, then split again if you still want to do that. The hives are combined by putting the laying worker one on top of a queenright hive over a queen excluder. You would have to put some small chocks on one side of the excluder to make a gap so the drones can get out. If the drone laying hive has a lot of bees use one sheet of newspaper. To do it, take the lid off the queenright hive, put a sheet of newspaper on, then an excluder and chocks, then the drone laying hive. The excluder should be left in place 3 weeks so the good queen below is kept away from potentially unfriendly bees above.

Minz, you don't say, but if drone brood was loaded up on both sides of the excluder it's likely laying workers. You can tell by how many eggs in the cells, look for cells with eggs, if there are many in one cell, it's laying workers. If there is just one properly positioned egg in each cell, it's a drone laying queen.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>17 march-walk away split. Didnt make sure young brood on both sides. 2 deeps for each hive.

So if you do a walk away split, when should you see eggs from a new queen?
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

They will start with a four day old (from the egg) larvae, so the queen will emerge 12 days later and will harden, orient, mate and usually be laying 14 days after that (26 days later). At the most she will be laying 33 days after the split. So that would be sometime between Apr 12 and Apr 19.

>19 april - inspection. Didnt see any capped cells. Didnt look for eggs (my mistake).

It would have been a good time to look for eggs, of course...

>20 april - installed queen. Not lot of bees interested in her. Ones interested seemed little agressive compared to another queen I installed in a different hive. I released queen.

Indifference to a queen is not a good sign...

>02 may- full inspection. Tons and tons of drone capped cells. No worker Capped cells.

I usually don't see that much capped drone in a laying worker hive. I often see it in a drone laying queen hive. Any multiple eggs?

>09 may - full inspection. Lots of drones hatched. Watched some comming out of capped cells. Less than 20 days since queen installed and they are hatching, hence laying workers I think. Looked hard for eggs, only sayw very few and large pupa, made me think laying workers have died out. 

Laying workers do not die out. They just keep developing as the lack of open worker brood pheromone will keep causing workers to develop ovaries.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm

Still sounds like a drone laying queen to me.

>Lots of hatched drones in hive. Original workers from split should be dead by late may.

I would move all the equipment 100 yards away, and shake them all out and give the brood to another hive at this point.


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