Glossary
A worker bee that has begun laying unfertilized eggs in a queenless colony. Because workers cannot mate, their eggs can only develop into drones. Multiple eggs per cell and a scattered, erratic pattern are telltale signs of laying workers.
In a queenright colony, the queen's pheromones suppress the reproductive development of worker ovaries. When a colony becomes queenless and remains so for several weeks, the absence of queen pheromone allows some workers' ovaries to activate. These laying workers begin depositing eggs, but because they have never mated and have no spermatheca, every egg they lay is unfertilized. Unfertilized eggs can only develop into drones (males).
Laying worker colonies display several distinctive patterns. Multiple eggs per cell (a queen lays precisely one egg per cell, centered at the bottom; laying workers deposit eggs randomly, sometimes 2 to 5 per cell, on the cell walls rather than the bottom). The brood pattern is scattered and erratic rather than the compact, organized pattern of a queenright colony. Drone brood appears in worker-sized cells, creating raised "bullet" cappings because the larger drone pupae stretch beyond the smaller cell dimensions.
There is no single "laying worker" to find and remove. Multiple workers develop laying capability simultaneously, and they are indistinguishable from non-laying workers visually. This is what makes the condition so difficult to correct.
Laying worker colonies are notoriously hard to requeen. The laying workers produce a pseudo-queen pheromone that makes the colony hostile to introduced queens. Direct queen introduction almost always results in the new queen being killed. The most reliable correction methods are: shaking all the bees from the hive 100 yards away (laying workers cannot fly well and do not return, while healthier workers do), then installing a new queen; or combining the laying worker colony with a strong queenright colony by the newspaper method, allowing the queenright pheromone to gradually suppress the laying workers.
No. Laying worker eggs are unfertilized and can only develop into drones. Queens develop from fertilized eggs fed a diet of royal jelly. Since laying workers cannot produce fertilized eggs, the colony cannot raise a new queen on its own.
Laying workers typically appear 2 to 4 weeks after a colony becomes hopelessly queenless (no queen, no eggs, and no young larvae from which to raise an emergency queen). The timeline varies by colony temperament and season.
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