Explore The Reasons Bee Workers Lay Eggs 

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The official version of the story is that the queen is the female reproductive in the hive. She lays fertilized eggs that turn into workers or queens. 

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 ... 

Laying Worker Bees

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If you look at the bees in the hive, they are skittish and the hive looks very empty. The frames with brood will have a mess of eggs in both worker and drone cells. 

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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.

Basically, a worker bee is, by nature, a very poor queen bee. She is not long enough to lay eggs neatly in the center of a cell. 

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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.

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

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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