r/Beekeeping Wiki

Drone Laying Workers (DLW)

Introduction

Workers laying eggs could either be due to queen failure, random genetic mutations or a recent swarm. The foremost sign of a laying worker is the presence of multiple scattered eggs per cell, as their abdomens are too short to reach the bottom. If these eggs develop, they will emerge into male drones, as workers lay unfertilized eggs. Under normal circumstances, other worker bees will remove these non-queen eggs (hence “worker policing”) to maintain consistent colony genetics (all births performed by the queen), and thus go unnoticed by the beekeeper.

Diagnosis (DLW vs New queen)

Worker abdomens are shorter than queens and so cannot reach the bottom of the cell. As a result, worker-placed eggs tend to be off-centre as the glue to the cell wall, eventually falling to the bottom.

How do you tell if it’s a rogue worker, or a new queen learning how to lay eggs? Look at the egg number per cell and their positions- new queens lay less eggs per cell, and are relatively orderly; when multiple eggs are laid in a single comb, workers will place the excess eggs into an empty cell. After 1-2 weeks, these larvae will be capped into worker brood, and only single eggs will be observed in comb. By contrast, more drones and drone comb will be present in laying worker colonies, with more chaos in the cells as the colony is “hopelessly queenless”.

image showing difference between queen laid eggs and a laying worker

Queens will sometimes lay 2 eggs in a cell, especially when they are newly mated. Occasionally, though rarely, you might even see three eggs in a cell. If you start seeing cells regularly with 3 or more eggs, you are almost certainly in a DLW situation.

Sometimes the cells inside DLW colonies will look like bowls of rice.

image showing the rice bowl of worker laid eggs Image credits u/Safe-Wolverine-4642

Fixing it

Fixing a hive with laying workers is more complicated than “requeening your hive“. As far as the colony is concerned, Her Majesty is still there, she’s just laying drone eggs. The colony will not have an issue with this until the last worker dies (which will never happen, since the colony collapses sooner than that). Any introduced queen will be rejected and killed.

Shake out - Method 1

Workers full of nectar will be able to beg their way into a nearby colony without much effort, bolstering worker forces of nearby hives. Any laying workers will either have their ovaries supressed by brood pheromones, or not be allowed entry into the hives.

Shake Out - Method 2

The foragers will find their way back to the hive, along with some of the nurse and middle-aged bees. The rest will drift to other colonies. If the laying worker drifts into a queenright colony, the presence of queen and brood pheromones will suppress her ovaries and she will cease egg laying, resuming normal worker functions (Reviewed in Smith et al., 2013). The colony will raise new a queen from the larvae in the added brood frame, who will mature and (hopefully) mate successfully, restoring order. Alternatively, you can introduce a mated queen.

Combine

The pheromones from the queenright colony will spread throughout the queenless hive, and by the time the workers chew through, they would have adjusted to her scent and unite as one colony.

If you then wish to split into a second colony again, you may do so.

Adding Brood Frames

We recomment against using this method.

It is possible to add brood to the colony until the workers have had their ovaries suppressed, they realise they are queenless and raise a new queen. It will take 4-6 frames of brood from other colonies at a minimum for the symptoms to subside, and that in itself can take weeks. Once they realise they are queenless, they will raise a queen which takes another month before she starts laying.

Rather, if you were to combine, it is almost guaranteed to work, results in the same outcome, and finished on a similar timeline as this method. It’s a much safer option to combine, rather than adding brood frames.