Queenlessness and laying workers

There are several issues that affect a colony of honeybees that can be very confusing; one of these is the issue around a colony losing its queen for some reason, or a new colony waiting for a queen to start to lay eggs. The waiting can seem like forever, particularly when all the sealed brood had emerged yet the queen has not started laying.

At this point the clock is ticking as the beekeeper worries about workers starting to lay eggs. Once this happens the colony is destined to die out as workers can only lay unfertilised eggs, unless the beekeeper intervenes.

A couple of things to bear in mind; the queen pheromone (a chemical substance produced by the queen) inhibits the making of queen cells and the laying of workers, and the brood pheromone inhibits the laying of workers (when there is no queen). Colin Butler and his research team at Rothamsted in the 1950s and 60s discovered this.

An example of when the beekeeper might experience laying workers is following a swarm control procedure that involves splitting the colony in half (or more) whereby one half of the split has a sealed queen cell QC and the other half has the original queen.

The beekeeper waits patiently for the new queen to emerge from the QC and then is advised to leave this half of the colony alone to let the new virgin queen mature before going out to mate with drones. During this time, of course any worker and drone brood becomes sealed and start to emerge after the pupal stage is complete. There is no queen to lay eggs and so there’s no unsealed brood.

It is a good idea to take note of when all brood becomes sealed. Make a note of when the queen emerged from its QC as if she doesn’t mate within about three to four weeks of emerging, she may become a drone laying queen. So, having been advised not to inspect the colony while this new queen is potentially out of the hive mating, it is ok to have a look at the frame that the QC was on just to see if she has emerged. To be safer, you could look after around 4.00pm as mating usually takes place between 11-4pm as a rule of thumb.

In your notes then, you have;

1. The date the colony became queenless (You made the split)
2. The date the queen emerged from the QC (needs to mate within around 21-28 days)
3. The rough date that all brood became sealed. (end of unsealed brood pheromone)
4. You will also need to make a note of when all the sealed brood has emerged too. (That is if the new queen isn’t laying by then.)

Why do you need these dates?

Well, one main reason apart from the ones I’ve listed already is that it’s to be able to calculate when and if the workers might start to lay eggs and what to do to stop them!

The reality is that we don’t know exactly when workers might start to lay eggs, but from experience it can be between 3-4 weeks after the brood is all sealed. As a reminder it’s the unsealed brood pheromone (and queen pheromone) that inhibits workers from laying eggs.

The worker has a pupal stage of 12 days (drone 14 days). This would imply that workers could start laying 9-16 days after all brood has emerged (no sealed brood).

You see the importance of making notes.

Ok, so that’s the foundation for this particular example of a colony waiting for a new queen to start laying after mating.

Observation plays a big part in beekeeping both inside and outside the hive. Things to look out for during this stage of waiting for the queen to start to lay;

1. You might spot the new queen inside the hive although young queens don’t tend to hang around on the face of a frame. They’re notoriously fickle in that they can easily hide away preferring to stay in the dark often at the bottom of the hive. They are slim because they’re not laying yet, and may have the same colouring as the workers making them hard to spot. They feed themselves at this stage (non-laying) so they are not surrounded by a retinue of workers feeding her royal jelly. But if you do see her, make a note.
2. You may spot the queen leaving the hive to mate or indeed returning after a mating flight as she alights onto the landing area of the hive. Make a note.
3. Inside the hive as the sealed brood emerges look for signs that the workers are preparing for a new queen; polishing cells in the middle of the brood frame in preparation for the queen to start laying. A sign that that the workers are expecting her to do so. The workers will also be bringing in pollen.

If after several days after all the worker brood has emerged, the queen still hasn’t started laying and you really can’t find her, you can put a frame of eggs and or very young larvae from another colony into the hive. A test frame. Have a look a few days later to see if the bees have started to make any QCs. If they have then sure enough it is queenless. You can let them continue or add another queen as the colony is ‘hopelessly queenless’. (see below)

Note 1 A test frame is a big investment to make especially after June 21^st as the colonies start to get smaller. You also need more than one colony.

If they haven’t made any QCs, then either there is a queen there or workers have just started to lay eggs. One of the issues with laying workers is that once they start, the colony won’t accept a queen or try to make one.

Note 2 Laying workers lay an egg on the wall of a cell not the base as they have a shorter abdomen compared to a queen. Often you will see more than one egg in a cell

There are a couple of things that can be done;

1. Wait until either the new queen or the workers start to lay, even though you’ve not seen the queen.

This is what I tend to do.

On the rare occasion that workers start to lay eggs then I proceed as follows; (You can do this before workers start to lay if you wish, but 9 times out of 10 the new queen starts to lay)

• If there is another colony close to the colony that has laying workers, take the colony with laying workers as far away as possible, up to 100 metres and shake all the bees onto the ground, well away from public access. The laying workers will not find their way back as they haven’t had an orientation flight (probably young bees). The other bees will get back and be accepted into the donor hive near where they came from. If there’s a drone laying queen then she will make her way back as she has been out on an orientation flight to mate. Putting a queen excluder in front of the hive entrance will stop her, but you will need to watch out for her.
• The second solution is to put a nuc with a frame of young larvae and eggs and the returning bees should make a queen as the laying workers don’t get there. Once again put the QE at the entrance in case of a drone laying queen getting back there.

These solutions can be used in general if you happen to find one of your colonies has laying workers in it. You’ve been away, not inspected for a while and find only drone brood for example.

Learning by observing;

Shaking the bees out

Earlier this year I picked up a swarm and hived it. The queen was a virgin and so needed to mate. As was the case with several queens this year, she seemed to take an age to start to lay, but eventually she did. Unfortunately, it was drone only. I couldn’t find her, but the brood pattern was indicative of a queen laying, not random brood on the frame that you get with laying workers.

There was another nuc nearby, so I decided to shake them out only about 20 metres away, putting the original nuc several metres away from where it had been originally. Most of the bees went to the donor nuc which had the QE in place and were accepted, but no sign of the queen. I noticed that a few workers had found their old nuc. Later on, I looked in the original nuc and there was the queen with a few of the bees. She’d found her way back to the original nuc even though it was several metres away from its original position.

One thing I learnt from this experience was that queens do find their way home when shaken out. I was also surprised to see that the queen found her original hive even though it was much more than ‘three feet’ away from its original position.

The queen lost the ability to lay eggs

A couple of years ago in the Spring, I was checking on nucs that I’d overwintered to see how they were coming along. All doing well except one that was slow and lethargic. I looked inside there was a lovely fat queen, but no brood at all. The workers were all ‘blacker’ than the other colonies, or that’s what I thought initially. I fed the colony with syrup in the hope that this would stimulate the queen into laying. A week later I returned and still no eggs, then I realised that the bees were blacker because they were old. The queen hadn’t been laying probably since the previous autumn and something must have gone wrong to stop her laying. Wow! I removed the queen and gave them another and these old bees worked brilliantly raising the new brood and the colony flourished.

I learnt from this experience that even if there’s a queen that isn’t laying, a barren queen, the workers will not lay themselves. Queen pheromone is enough to deter the workers from laying.

I also learnt that old bees can make royal jelly to feed the queen and the young larvae if they have to.

A small queen didn’t manage to mate or to lay eggs

Another example comes from the observation hive that I used to use as a mating nuc a few years ago. I populated the hive with bees and a QC. The queen duly emerged and I watched as the excitement amongst the workers grew. Each day I tried to catch her leaving to mate without success. Meanwhile the workers were busy gathering pollen, polishing the cells in the hope that she would start to lay. Time went on and after a month or so still no eggs. By this time, I had real difficulty spotting the queen, she’d be in the corner on her own. She was only slightly bigger that the workers. Obviously, no chance of her laying now. I removed her and gave them another queen. This time she started laying about 10 days later.

One thing I learnt from this example is that even with a queen that didn’t mate, she has enough pheromone to deter the workers from laying

Hopelessly queenless

In early August this year I made up a nuc box to use with grafts of very young larvae from my favourite colony with the idea of making QCs from them. They had a couple of frames of brood, a couple of frames of stores. Needless to say, they set about making QCs. Eight days or so later I broke down all of the QCs that they’d made in preparation for adding my frame of grafts in the hope that they’d make QCs from them. Three days later I checked the grafts and nothing! Hmm, I had a look around for QCs and they had managed to make one from the frame that I had originally put in. I broke this one down and had a really good look for any more.

Note 3 Bees would very much rather make a queen from one of their own sisters than any larvae that you give them.

Note 4. A queen can be made from any worker larva up to three days old. If the bees make a queen from a 3-day old larva it is fed royal jelly for only another 2.5-3 days before the QC is sealed. This queen is as you might imagine smaller that a queen fed royal jelly from the time it hatched from its egg. This small queen is a devil to find and can often get through the QE.

Hopefully, they are now ‘hopelessly queenless’. I did some more grafts and this time success; they made some QCs from my grafts. I should add that I was feeding Candipolene, pollen substitute and also syrup to simulate a nectar flow, necessities for getting QCs made.

Note 5 Hopelessly queenless means that the colony has no queen, but also no resource to make one either, no eggs or larvae from which to make a queen

The takeaway here is that if I was going to add a queen and not grafts, she would have been killed by the bees because they were not hopelessly queenless first time around, they still had larvae to make their own queen.

Please remember this if ever you want to add a queen to a colony!! One of the biggest mistakes that beekeepers make.