# Queen only laying drone brood in spring.



## djjmc (Feb 6, 2015)

Small Top bar colony. 15 Bars filled out from the previous summer. ( 4 foot - 32 bar hive) 

During inspection in March I discovered that the hive was full of drones. Along with drone brood. No sign of any worker brood or larvae/eggs.
Queen was in the hive. But unable to tell if she was the original queen or if the original had been replaced via supersedure during the winter. 
There were a couple of empty queen cells. Which leads me to believe that the old queen died and they raised a new one, which couldn't mate (winter) and the new one started laying which resulted in 100% drone cells. 
Based on the amount of drones in the hive I suspect that it had been a good 2 months or so with this situation ongoing.

Steps taken:
Located and killed the failed queen.
Purchased a new queen.
Installed successfully. 
Checked on day three and queen had been released. 

Future steps:
See if the hive has enough workers to revive itself, if not then will have to buy a package, and start over.


----------



## tech.35058 (Jul 29, 2013)

I think your assumptions are pretty much correct. 
It is my understanding that without workers, & food( nectar _&_ pollen), the new queen wont lay.
miss any part & its a no-go.
Is this your only hive, or can you feed them a comb of worker brood from another hive ?
Good Luck, CE


----------



## djjmc (Feb 6, 2015)

tech.35058 said:


> I think your assumptions are pretty much correct.
> It is my understanding that without workers, & food( nectar _&_ pollen), the new queen wont lay.
> miss any part & its a no-go.
> Is this your only hive, or can you feed them a comb of worker brood from another hive ?
> Good Luck, CE


Pollen - no problems, the workers have been bringing in pollen throughout spring up to this point. Just had nothing, apart from drone brood, to feed.
Honey - lots of stores left.
Workers - this is the issue. Not many left. The hive would be pumping if it wasn't for the queen failing. So many healthy drones! Very little Varroa.

No other hive.


----------



## AugustC (Aug 7, 2013)

That is always a problem when you first out... bees begat bees. Much of problems you have can just be solved by having another hive.
In your position there really isn't mush else you can do. You might want to reduce the hive size, as is number of combs so the reduced worker number aren't looking after quite so many combs. You could then use some of the removed combs to set up some bait hives to increase your stock and the remaining you can feed back in as the bee numbers increase.


----------

