This last nucleus hive was opened two weeks ago and a newly-emerged virgin queen was seen in it. By now she should be successfully mated, with sealed brood visible in the colony.
It's a really hot day again so I was expecting the bees to be calm, but these ones seemed practically asleep. There was very little activity at the entrance, even when smoked.
It was the same with the lid removed - barely a hum from the brood inside. I'd expect an easy inspection in this heat, with most of the bees out foraging, but the early signs were not encouraging for the health of this colony.
Absolute stillness inside too - hardly a buzz from any of them and surprisingly, no sign of any brood on this central frame.
At first I was pleased to find eggs on this frame, but looking closer there were only half a dozen of them, and dotted in random empty cells. Also, not a single one of them was positioned centrally in the cell. It's not shown very clearly in the photo, but every egg was poorly placed, some even right in the corners. These are the classic signs of a laying worker - a completely terminal situation for a colony without intervention from a beekeeper.
One of the queen bee's functions is to suppress the development of the female workers' ovaries. After an extended period of being queenless it is possible for one or more workers to become egg layers. These workers have never mated, so can only lay infertile eggs - which can only become male bees [drones - their sole purpose is to mate with a queen and they do no foraging, housekeeping, or even guarding duties].
The worst thing about laying workers is that they will immediately kill any queen introduced to the colony - it seems that this is what has happened to our queen. We spent weeks trying to raise a queen successfully and when we finally managed it, a blinking useless drone-laying worker killed her! So completely maddening and quite possibly a terminal disaster for this colony.
The only way to save this colony from dying out now is to find and kill the egg-laying worker. Unfortunately, she looks identical to every other worker bee in the colony (even though her ovaries have grown, it wouldn't be visible to us. This also explains why a laying worker's eggs are always poorly positioned - their bottoms aren't quite long enough to reach the base of the cell so every egg ends up stuck to the side or in a corner).
I went back to the house to borrow a spare sheet from the airing cupboard. Most beekeepers would probably consider any more time spent on this colony as a complete waste of effort, it being so late in the season, but I'd like to give this colony every chance to survive, if at all possible.
