Beekeeping | My Queen Became a Drone Layer… CAN I SAVE THE HIVE?
13K views · Aug 24, 2026 · Howto & Style
Comments · 35
@AstralWalker316 · 1 month ago
Even after over 3 years I never fail to learn something from one of your videos. Thank you so much Dave
2
@Justin47635 · 1 month ago
I can't think of much worse than a drone laying Queen or laying worker. About the most reliable method I've found to get rid of them is to combine with a stronger colony. <br>Never fun and never not annoying.<br><br>Thanks for the continued info David.
4
@DerekCampbellIS · 1 month ago
Thank you for respecting the queen and not eliminating her on the video. I so respect you for this David. Thank you again.
@atlas4225 · 1 month ago
Patrick has been paying attention. <br>You guys do well together!<br><br>Thank you for your time.
@KevinLombard-r9v · 1 month ago
Great way to introduce a queen, kind of like if you have a laying worker hive you can put the queen on the out side of the box with a frame of brood and nurse bees
1
@heavymechanic2 · 1 month ago
I lose a few queens every summer, plugging in a NUC is a win win and putting their honey back on top is a success. Had a hive like yours with a sorry queen, put a caged queen in and found her balled on the bottom with charged cups. Nothing is for sure.
@dennarobertson222 · 1 month ago
Thanks!
1
@andrewr2650 · 1 month ago
very interesting video! Ive used a Nuc/resource hive to re-queen a number of times in the past with a near perfect success rate, although never had a drone layer. those were mostly large hives that didn't re-queen after swarming. <br><br>The only thing i do differently is I always put the all frames from the smaller queen right hive into the large hive together and in order, just as if i was dropping a NUC into an empty box. It probably doesn't matter but in my mind keeping all the bees from the smaller colony together provides the biggest possible buffer around the queen.
@codyfetzner463 · 1 month ago
I live about 50 miles west of you and also discovered a drone laying queen this week in a colony that had just superseded. I wondered if maybe the long stretch of severe weather we had recently hindered her chances of successful mating. Unfortunately I could not find her in the hive and I was nervous about combining them with another colony without being able to remove her so I shook the colony out into the yard and let them disperse themselves amongst the other colonies.
@anthonypeterson3112 · 1 month ago
Im confident that a queenless colony i had this year was trying to make queens from laying worker eggs. All they had were drone cells and weird, ugly queen cells. Waited way to long to fix the problem because I assumed they wouldn't try to make queen cells from drone eggs, but with no worker cells and only drone cells and queen cells they must've been queenless.
@jayglosser2014 · 1 month ago
Great Video David and Patrick 👍 Step by step with explaining the purpose for giving life to a hive. I sent you an email with a picture attached asking you if you had ever experienced or found this object on a frame. Let me know if you didn't receive it and I will resend the picture. HAVE A GREAT DAY 👍
@Alex-IndianaBeekeeper · 1 month ago
Hey David, I've had Laying worker colonies try to make queen cells with their laying worker Eggs.
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