Drone Laying Queen - Christin's Hive (April 28)

Cloudy, 65 degrees.

Today I wanted to check on Hive 2 (Christin’s hive) as I noticed the queen was not laying many eggs on the last inspection on April 19. 

We have problems again.  This queen is laying only unfertilized eggs, resulting in only drone bees hatching.

 

To understand why having a queen that is a drone layer is such a problem and how queens become drone layers, one needs to know something about the lives of bees.  Shortly after a queen hatches, she needs to fly out of the hive and mate with several drones.  This provides her with enough fertilized eggs for the rest of her laying life, which can be up to 5 years!

Throughout her life, she can lay either fertilized or unfertilized eggs.  The fertilized eggs become worker bees while the unfertilized eggs become drones.  Worker bees collect pollen and nectar, make honey, and raise the brood or baby bees.  Without them the colony dies.  Drones hang out waiting to find virgin queens to mate with and do no work for the hive.  You can see which type of bee I would prefer to have.

If the weather is cold when the queen is supposed to be taking her mating flight, she may stay in the hive and miss the breeding window. That means she will not be able to lay fertilized eggs for the rest of her life- she can produce only drones and no worker bees.  A colony without worker bees will not last for very long.

So what does one do with a drone-laying queen?  One kills it and replaces it with a new queen who has successfully completed a mating flight and is laying worker bees.    

Since I have a 4^th hive that is just getting started with a well mated queen that is laying fine (purchased queen Minnesota Hygienic), I decided to combine Christin’s hive with the new 4^th hive.

I first found the bad queen in Christin's hive and removed her.  I put a piece of newspaper on the top of Christin’s hive and placed the hive body from the good hive on top of that. 

The idea is that the bees will chew through the newspaper slowly introducing the two hives preventing any fighting and loss of bees.

Christin’s hive now has 3 hive bodies.

I will check on them in 24 hours to see how the combination of hives is going.

Here is what all of the frames looked like from the Queen - laying only drones.  Notice the pattern is not tight with open cells in the middle of closed cells.  Plus the cells are raised above the wax foundation (drone cells).  Those are 2 signs the queen is no good.

This is what the hives look like now after the initial combination.  Christin's hive is on the far left.  Her original hive on the bottom.  The new hive with the good queen on the top.