How to Save a Hive with a Laying Worker

Do I have a laying worker?

First of all, let’s make sure that you do in fact have a laying worker. Because a worker honey bee is not mated, she can only lay unfertilized eggs. Any unfertilized eggs, from a worker who has begun to lay or from a queen who is choosing to lay drone eggs, or is running out of sperm, will develop into drones. So a good clue is if you open up your box and suddenly see an unprecedented number of drones crawling around, you may have a problem.

If you catch the situation before it has gotten to this point, and the drones have not emerged yet, you will notice that worker sized cells are capped with bullet shaped cappings, instead of the normal flat cappings a worker cell will be covered with.

But maybe you are really on top of your game, and you have no capped brood yet, but notice that the eggs just don’t look right. They are laid on the side of the cell, not all the way down at the bottom, or on top of pollen, or (the most telltale sign) there are two, three, eight or more eggs all in a single cell, piled one on top of another very haphazardly. If you see these signs, in several cells, you have a laying worker.

Can you fix a laying worker colony? Or is it bound to die?

The good news is that yes, you most assuredly CAN save a colony with a laying worker. Utilizing a process where you shake all the frames of bees, you can in fact save them. Keep reading to find out how.

First, how a colony works when they have a laying worker, and what causes it.

In a healthy hive, with a laying queen, the queen emits pheromone, or in laymen’s terms, a smell, that suppresses the worker’s ovaries. This keeps the hive running smoothly, with everyone doing their own job. But when a queen is failing, or gone entirely, there is no longer pheromone being produced, and so the worker’s ovaries can become active. But because they have never mated, they cannot lay fertilized eggs. As a result, the colony will be over run with drones. They will give their remaining resources to raise them and feed them, and the drones cannot help keep the hive running in return. The workers will get old and die and if this situation is not addressed, it will kill the colony.

When a worker begins to lay, she will produce the pheromone that will suppress the other worker’s ovaries, but she does not produce enough to fill the entire colony with the smell. As a result, you may end up with many laying workers throughout the colony.

How do I make a laying worker hive queen right?

Thankfully, this is something that is actually possible. I have seen someone lose a hive to having a laying worker, and at the time, I thought it was a hopeless situation. Now, I have successfully saved a colony with laying workers.

Take the hive, and move it about 20-35′ away from the original hive location. Put an empty box in it’s place. This box will become their new home, so put a bottom board under it as well. Do not use the same equipment they were in. The idea is that there are absolutely no straggler bees left on the frames or woodenware when you are done shaking it, so using the same box and bottom board would risk a bee left behind.

Lay out a white sheet (it will get dirty or possibly stained, so you don’t want to use your favorite sheet set!) near the box you removed from the bee yard. The bees will be quite upset and form a cloud around you, so you will want to ensure you are wearing appropriate protective gear. This morning, when I shook a laying worker hive, it was somewhat weakened already, so I just wore my jacket, gloves, jeans, boot bands, and cowboy boots, and I was fine. If the colony had been larger, I probably would have opted for my full suit.

Begin by systematically shaking each frame, until there are no bees left on them. This part is very important, because if you leave the laying worker on the frame, you have only stressed the bees, and have not solved the problem. Shake the bees over the sheet, one frame at a time. Set the frames aside once you are convinced their are no more bees on the frame.

Once you have shaken each frame, take the frames back to the new hive, and put them in, so the bees still have the resources they need. If they are utilizing less that five frames, add the bees to a nuc box instead of a full deep box so they will fill out faster.

Now for a queen

You’ve solved the laying worker problem, but you still need a queen. Add a frame of open brood to the hive from another colony (why you should always have two colonies at a minimum) so the pheromones the brood releases will help the workers to not begin laying again. This will also give them a much needed population boost. They can raise a queen from this brood, if there is young brood. If you want to add a queen, wait a day or two so they will accept her, then follow normal steps to add her to the colony.

Why this works

The laying worker cannot fly and does not know her way back to the colony. The other bees know where “home” is and can fly there. in a few hours, all the bees should be gone, leaving only the laying workers on the sheet.

For excellent images, and another way to save a populous laying worker hive, see https://beeculture.com/laying-workers-happens-fix/