Can Worker Bees Lay Eggs?

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Can worker bees lay eggs? Under certain extraordinary circumstances, worker bees can lay eggs. One special race of bees can even lay “fertilized eggs” which is a bit bizarre. 

If the queen dies, the workers will rear an emergency queen. If this emergency queen dies the bees become hopelessly queenless. 

The Orthodox Social Structure Of The Hive

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A drone bee on the other hand is derived from an unfertilized egg and hence only has a single set of chromosomes from the egg. A drone is therefore called a haploid.

Chromosomes and Bees

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When a hive goes hopelessly queenless the worker bees can become laying workers. In this case, you can easily see that you have a laying worker beehive because the hive changes its nature.

Laying Worker Bees

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Laying Workers In Queenright Hives

If you start to see this, it is probably a sign that you either need to requeen or that you have too many supers on the hive.

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Cape Honeybee Laying Workers

Apis mellifera capensis is just a more womanly bee than all other bees. Basically, these bees have a lot of queen pheromones.

A cape-laying worker hive will also make the normal fizz hiss of a hopeless queenless hive when you open it. 

Cape Laying Worker Hive

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ADVICE

If you look in the brood area of a laying worker hive, you will find eggs scattered around the bottom of cells. Sometimes there can be as many as 10 eggs in a cell. You will have a mess of drones laid in worker cells and done cells. Some of these drones hatch and look like little abominations.

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