Nothing but DRONE CELLS in the Hive - What should I do? 

There is a couple of ways to try and fix a drone laying worker hive. One is exactly what you did in this video. The other is to introduce a frame of open brood to get a different pheromone flowing throughout the hive. Within five or six days add another frame of open brood and this will reinforce that there is a laying Queen in the hive. You will know if it was successful because they will start making Queen cells and at that point, you can tear the Queen cells down and introduce a laying Queen and they will accept her. If you just try to re-Queen a laying worker hive a large majority of the time the colony thinks they have a Queen because of the laying worker and they kill the introduced Queen. Both ways can work so hopefully the way you did it will be successful. Thanks for sharing brother.

Had a laying worker last year. Did not realize it until I lost 2 introduced queens in attempts to requeen the colony. Removed drone brood frames and added a frame of very young larvae and eggs. Bees made their own queen and the problem was solved.

You never know when you open a hive what you are going to find. Thanks for sharing.

I really was not sure what to do here so this is definitely not a “how to” video. Just thought I would show my thought process and solution. For those who have had success fixing this problem your ideas would be greatly appreciated! This will help me in the future and may help other viewers who are experiencing a similar situation. Thanks🙂🐝

I think the course of action you took was the correct one. I'm sure you had laying workers. Now you can combine them in a 10 or 8 frame deep and re-queen it , or re-queen both nucs. Also, I would add a frame of brood to each one. Let them sit a couple of days so they really know they have no queen. Cheer up Bruce, you sound like this has really got you down. I know how you feel. Good luck, I can't wait to hear what happens.

Good luck Bruce. Hope you can save them pal

Bruce, you have laying workers. Roll out 2 frames drone brood into a strong hive, roll in 2 frames brood and eggs. Give them resources to create a queen. Do the same 2 weeks later. Seed with new queen cell if you have one.

I have a similar situation. There is a queen but she was poorly mated by the looks of it and she is laying eggs and nothing but drones being raised. And the drones are worker size. Going to take her out and replace her with a good queen. Before the hive completely dies out.

I would say with near 100% certainty that you have laying workers. The workers will move multiple eggs out of a cell leaving only one. Not seeing multiple eggs just means they fixed it before you saw it. Introducing a queen will only lead to her rejection and death. The super spotty laying pattern and the fact that drones are being reared in worker sized cells is another big indicator! Hopefully Im wrong though! Good luck brother!

Drives you nuts doesn't it? I had a great colony of bees, a rocking queen, 3 supers of honey. I am a small operation of 10 to 25 colonies. One day I inspected, there seemed to be a lot of drone cells. Open larvae, 1 egg in the middle of each cell. Except for drone cells everything looked ok. But...I could not find that queen with the big green dot. Never saw her again. No effort to make a queen was mafe so I went thru a long introduction of a new queen. They seemed to do great with her. Oops, Nope. I put a frame of brood, eggs, everything. Nope. They seem to want to die. Numbers got lower. So, yesterday I changed out their comb. I squashed all the drone cells and froze the comb. I dumped them on the back of our 14 acres and moved the hive boxes to the other end of the apiary. Sounds extreme but good grief, strike three your out. They will find homes in the Apiary and the laying workers will get a Come to Jesus lesson. Sometimes no matter what you do Nature does what it wants to do. You are doing a good job.

you should have plenty of queen cells in other hives this time of year, you could just swap a frame out in each, and nothing will be lost.

Were these walk away splits? I'm dealing with this exact issue with multiple spring splits I did and have discovered that it's not laying workers but a poorly mated queen due to a couple of weeks of bad weather after I did the splits. Once I saw the drone laying situation I searched and searched for a queen and could never find her even though there were single eggs in cells vs. the tell tale evidence of a laying worker with multiple eggs in cells. I finally decided to give up and let the bees migrate into other hives. I shook the frames out on a drop cloth just so I could watch what they did. After about 15 minutes I started to to the bees walking in a curve pattern. I watched and there she was! This tiny very dark queen that now that I saw her I understand why she was so hard to spot. All that said to suggest that if what you've tried doesn't work and the drone problem persists I'd think the new queens you introduced were killed.

Add eggs/larvae and use the hive tool to gently pull down in several places on that frame. The will make them create emergency cells.. Find and squash old Queen. Definately not enough nursbees in there

I would call Rusty and have him pick them and when they were fixed tell him you want them back that is the easy way.

I wish this video was made 10 years ago! I had this problem my first season and couldn’t figure out what happened. I shook out the entire hive 50 yards from the hive. The laying worker won’t fly back to the hive.

If you have drone laying queens. You dont shack the bees off. Just remove the queens and if there is alot of drone cells remove and put empty frames in for her to lay in. You might put a capped frame of brood in if the bee numbers are low

Hive test the Queen and replace her. Sorry for your loss.

Do you have a laying worker -- no queen

Hi, maybe u could take a frame from a stronger hive the has new eggs (1 to 3 days old) and place it into the drone hive. The bees should make a new queen. I'm sure you probably already thought of that. Hope you get it fixed. Of course you would have to make sure old Queen is not in the drone hive.

I gave my hive some foundationless frames a week or so ago and I just checked them. Two of the frames are drawn with almost completely drone comb and one frame is filled with drone brood of all ages. I panicked until I saw a couple full frames of worker brood. My question is what do I do with a frame full of drones? Should I just let them be? Feed them to the chickens? Move them to the outside of the box in hopes the bees use them for storage after the drones emerge?

Bruce, could it be those 2 nucs that there were virgin Queens that never got mated?

You could have a worker laying eggs. And it's very hard to get rid of.

Hey Bruce how did everything work out for you ?! Did they make it going through the same thing here in VA Thanks

Could be a laying worker. If there is no queen some times a worker tries to be one and will even lay. But they won’t be fertile . So she will just lay drones.

Laying worker. No queen

Soon enough they won’t have anything but lazy boys!! 🤣

Queen didn’t get mated properly shake hive out install a new cell or Queen …

Never understand why anybody would shake bees on the floor because the laying worker or queen will always fly back with them. I would have just United all of them with newspaper and you would ended up with a decent hive.

😮 thing

Remove the 2nd box. Make those go to another hive.

You got a lot of squashed bees on the edge of those boxes bruh

That’s an egg laying worker bee....shake them out...start over....

Just my opinion, I would have caged the queen for a few days.