Hi brains trust.
I did a super inspection this morning and there is STILL brood in the super. The first time we noticed this was in late April.
I was hoping the culprit laying worker may have died by now and the problem would be solved. I read workers can live 4-6 weeks but longer in Winter. Do you think it’s probably still the same worker? Is there any action I can take?
Thanks everyone.
The time frame indicates it is the same worker laying in the super Jane, but she must be running out of time. If the brood in the super is all drones then the queen is in the brood box and rules out a faulty QX.
Our ‘Winter’ is not cold enough to extend a bees life through inactivity. At the moment my hives are set back about an hour in the mornings in flying and foraging and only slightly smaller brood clusters.
You could take the super about 30 meters from the hive and shake off every bee onto the ground, the ‘true female’ bees will fly back to the hive but a laying worker won’t be able to fly that far. But you have to get every bee off the frames, if you miss one then she could be the laying worker.
Cheers Jane
great advice, thanks Peter. We’ll try shaking off the super frames and see how that goes. I’m guessing that the drone brood in the super might be discouraging a lot of honey being stored? We’ve had an enormous nectar flow with the paperbarks but not heaps of honey building up.
I don’t think it’s ever just one laying worker: I can see this happening because with the use of a queen excluder, the queen’s pheromones’ are as strong up there. I had it happen over an excluder once when I placed a two medium boxes one with brood above and excluder on a queen right hive. The box with brood was on top. I wound up with a queen above and below the excluder because the bees made a queen in the top box.
wow. Bees are tricky!
Hi Peter, I did an inspection this morning and when I found the queen in the Brood box, I took the super away and shook of all the workers before putting the hive back together again.
I hope all those workers can find their way back to the hive? Even though they’re from the super.
It was interesting to see that the brood pattern in the super was quite well organised- not all over the place but rather more like the pattern you see from a queen. But the queen was definitely in the Brood box so fingers crossed this will help sort things out. and there were a lot of drones in the super. I will keep taking th roof off on fine days to let the drones out of the super.
The workers will know where ‘home’ is so that isn’t an issue Jane. I have had the same issue and had to do a second shake of the bees off the super a few times but it has always worked for me.
You might find some drones hanging about the hive but not allowed inside, the workers will limit the number of drones they are willing to support.
Cheers