requeening tomarrow

[Michael Bush]

>Can Laying workers coexist with a queen? I seem to recall that the outcome of such situations usually is the loss of the queen.

Yes, there are always laying workers in a hive.  But with a queen there the "egg police" will catch them and keep them under control.  You won't have a PROBLEM with laying workers with a queen in the hive.

[Zoot]

That's interesting about "egg police". Maybe they're just overworked at the moment. There were a lot of drone cells in there. Kind of took me aback.

ABout the slatted rack arrangement (Brian) ....cant you simply exchange any frames that develope brood up in the honey supers with ones that have only drawn comb (from the brood boxes or elsewhere) even without a rack or an excluder?

[Brian D. Bray]

Yes, and unformity in boxsize makes this much easier.
But I prefer the slatted rack for several reasons.
1.  The queens is less likely to cross the open space it represents, confining the size of the brood chamber.
2.  It is not a jungle gym set that the workers have to climb through to access the rest of the hive--honey stores.
3.  I gives additional space for the bees to expand into on hot days and a platform from which they can work to fan or circulate air through the hive.
4.  With added space and easier access the bees are less likely to feel crowded and go into swarm mode.

[Zoot]

Well, this situation continues to confound me. 11 days after introducing the new queen to my apparently queenless colony (and I now am virtually certain that it was queenless) I did an inspection with our local inspector who is also sort of a neighbor.

I had added another medium several days after introducing the new queen on the assumption that, with a strong honey flow in progress, she would get to work immediately and fill both boxes with brood quickly. This was not the case; the bottom box is (was before actually) nicely drawn but the vast portion of visible brood was drone. There was a very small amount of capped worker brood but the drone brood was far more numerous, totally dominating the faces of some frames. We suspected that the queen (the 2nd of the season) may have been killed or seriously impaired. We did find her eventually and she looked perfect aside from the fact that she was wandering seemingly aimlessly on an outer frame with no visible attendants (no smoke); nicely shaped, no damage or visible injuries. ?? Also, the 2nd box is completely empty. The inspectors suggestion was to give her another week and see is she starts to lay more worker brood. Any thoughts?

[Michael Bush]

>There was a very small amount of capped worker brood but the drone brood was far more numerous, totally dominating the faces of some frames.

First, a failing queen would lay a lot of drones.  Second it's 24 days after the old queen is gone before the drones would have emerged.  So for the next 24 days there would still be a lot of drone brood and the last of the worker brood would have emerged three days before that.

>We suspected that the queen (the 2nd of the season) may have been killed or seriously impaired.

Or seriously impared and then replaced.

> We did find her eventually and she looked perfect aside from the fact that she was wandering seemingly aimlessly on an outer frame with no visible attendants

Typical of a virgin queen.  Give her two weeks and I'll bet you'll have a nicely laying queen.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

[Zoot]

MB

Your observations are interesting because they reflect the initial opinion of the gentleman I bought the new queen from (that there was a virgin queen in there). But I should have mentioned that I did mark the new purchased queen and and it was still very clear when we found her. Is it possible that she wasn't successfully inseminated on her mating flight but is (as she appears to be) otherwise healthy?

[Michael Bush]

>Is it possible that she wasn't successfully inseminated on her mating flight but is (as she appears to be) otherwise healthy?

Certainly.