Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Unite a laying-worker nucleus colony, on top, with a strong, healthy nucleus colony on
the bottom. Remove the excess paper from the outside and wait a few days. The bees
will (almost always) sort this out themselves, leaving a single colony with one queen
and no laying workers.
The eggs are laid in regular worker cells. Because a laying worker is smaller than a
queen, many of the eggs she lays do not reach the bottom of the cell and cling to the
sides. And because there are several, perhaps many laying workers, you may see sever-
al eggs in a cell. Other workers remove multiple eggs and raise a single drone larva in
each cell. Initially,the overall pattern on a brood frame will be spotty, with some cells
unoccupied, some with multiple eggs, some with normal-looking larva, and perhaps
some capped drone cells. It is a confusing mess. Left to its own devices this colony is
doomed, and if it's your colony, intervention is necessary.
It takes a colony several weeks to reach this sad state, and experienced beekeepers,
rather than invest the time and effort required to save the colony, simply let it expire.
This choice becomes obvious late in the season when even heroic efforts usually prove
futile.
However, if your laying-worker colony is discovered early in the process, or early
enough in the season, there is a good chance it can be saved. Here's how to combine it
with one of your other colonies. Reduce the laying-worker colony to one or at most two
broodnest boxes. By now the colony is weak, so combine frames from the two or three
brood boxes into one or two boxes. Put most of the brood and as many bees as possible
into a single box.
To do this, first remove any empty frames from the box into which you are going
to put these frames. Then, remove the frames that have brood in them, along with the
adhering bees, and fill the empty spaces. Take the rest of the frames and shake the bees
into the new boxes.
Then, remove the cover, inner cover, and any honey supers on a nearby strong,
healthy colony (with a queen). Place a sheet of newspaper over the top of the frames,
and using your hive tool, make a slit in the paper between two or three frames, removing
the excess from the edges. Place your laying-worker boxes directly on top of the news-
