The other hive

Evidence of laying workers.  Several cells in this comb contain multiple eggs rather than the expected single egg. 

My second hive, which I don't discuss often, is near collapse.  At some point during her introduction to the hive, the queen must have been killed.  I could have accidentally killed her or maybe the sugar plug in her queen-cage malfunctioned.  Either way, it eventually became apparent to me that there was no queen in that hive.  Now, in spite of my attempts to save it, the hive has devolved into a nearly irreversible downward spiral, which will almost certainly result in its demise. 

Here is the progression of events thus far.  Probably within one week of installing the package of bees in my hive (ironically, this package was installed April 1st), the queen died.  Because both hives had identically sized bee packages and, therefore, the same population sizes, they were equally productive and I couldn't see any initial indicators that there was no queen.  However, by at least April 20th, I could see there wasn't a queen based on the absence of egg laying.  At that point, I attempted to enable the worker bees to create there own new emergency queen by transferring a comb from the other hive that was loaded with newly laid eggs.  Initially, this effort appears to work because the worker bees modified several of the normal "worker cells" into "queen cells," which are larger in size and resemble a peanut shell when they are completed.  I could see health-looking bee larva growing in these cells and one of them was even capped (during the development of a young bee, they go through several stages, which culminate in a "capped" stage where the bee's cell is given a cover of wax and the young bee goes through its final transformation from something that looks like a grub to an adult honey bee).  Unfortunately, although things appeared to be looking up for the hive, the recovery was derailed by what is called "laying workers."

To understand laying workers you need a little background information.  Not long after a young queen bee emerges from her capped queen cell, she will undertake what is called her "maiden flight," which is really a euphemism for leaving the hive to participate in an orgy of mating with many drones (males) and then returning to the hive.  All of the sperm from these drone is stored internally and she won't need to mate again during her lifetime.   After the maiden flight the queen's abdomen will enlarge (so much so that she won't be able to fly very well) and she will begin laying up to 1,000 eggs per day.  Most of the eggs she lays will be fertilized with the sperm she's been saving.  However, a minority of eggs she lays will not be fertilized.  When laid, these unfertilized eggs will grow into male bees called drones.  The fertilized eggs, on the other hand, can either develop into a sterile worker bee or a queen bee.  What determines this course of development is how the worker bees tending to the eggs treat them.  If the worker bees enlarge the egg's cell and feed the bee a special diet after it hatches the it will grow into a queen.  Otherwise, with a normal-sized cell and standard diet, the bee will grow into a sterile worker.

In most cases there can really only be one queen in a hive, and, consequently, the creation of new queens only occurs under special circumstances (I can think of three right now): swarming, usurpation, and emergency replacement.  In the spring, if the hive is doing well it will sometimes generate a new queen and split into two hives, which is called "swarming."  If the current queen is getting old and not laying as productively as she once did, the worker bees will raise a new queen from the older queen's eggs.  This new queen will kill the old queen and take her place.  Finally, if the queen has unexpectedly died, the workers will attempt to take one of the eggs the previous queen laid before she died and raise a replacement queen.

This brings me back to my currently failing beehive.  For this hive, there was no option for generating an emergency queen because the previous queen had not had the opportunity to lay any eggs before she died.  If a situation like this occurs in nature, the hive will gradually devolve into a rather sad scene.  At some point, a number of normally sterile workers will change into what is call "laying workers."  Basically, in the case of a laying worker, several workers will begin laying only sterile eggs (i.e. drones).  These drone eggs are laid in worker sized cells (drone cell are normally larger than worker cells), which causes them to emerge undersized.  To make matters worse, the laying workers will often lay several eggs in each cell, which ultimately won't work out.  Eventually, because no new worker bees are being produced, the population of workers will decline until the hive collapses altogether.

Although the loss of a queen in a hive with no eggs is a predicament, all is not necessarily lost for the bee keeper.  There are a number of ways you can "requeen" a beehive to save the hive.  One way is to move a comb full of recently layed eggs from another beehive to the queenless hive.  Typically, the bees will accept the comb as there own and raise a replacement queen from one of the eggs.  However, this needs to be done not long after the queen dies or laying workers could take over who will view any new queen as an enemy and kill her before she can emerge from her cell.

In my hive (i.e. the one that is failing), it appears that I reacted too late and layer workers had already developed.  About a week after I witnessed the encouraging formation of emergency queen cell, I checked the hive again and found that the cells had been dismantled.  At the time my hope had been that one of developing queens had emerged from her cell and killed the other developing queens which is what they do when they emerge.  However, my last hive inspection now suggests that laying workers killed the queens.  Since the previous inspection, the hive population has further decreased and the only developing brood appeared to be randomly placed undersized drones.  Finally, a close inspection of several cells showed instances of multiple eggs in each cell. 

Because this hive has laying workers and such a low population, I've decided to employ a salvage method described on this website.  Basically, I'm going to take the remaining bees from the failing hive and shake them off their combs in front of the successful hive.  The failed hive will be removed from the area and its combs will be frozen in a freezer overnight to kill any of the laying workers' eggs and larva.  Not finding any other hive to go to, the homeless worker bees are expected to join the remaining hive where they can live out the few naturally remaining weeks of there lives with a sense of purpose.  The frozen combs will then be thawed and placed in the remaining hive where the workers will make use of them (after cleaning out the dead eggs and larva, of course).  

If the weather is clear tomorrow afternoon, I will check the hive once more to make sure there is no queen and then implement the plan.