Coming out of winter or trying to recover from multiple swarms, both bees and beekeepers must reassess the queenright status of each colony. Occasionally a hive will make it through the bulk of the winter, but lose their queen before drones begin flying in the spring. Or after the complex drama of a swarm and the resulting queen replacement cycle in the original colony, failure may still occur. If a colony becomes hopelessly queenless, with no further prospects of regaining a mated queen, laying workers might develop to take up the slack.
This article comes from Betterbee’s archive of past articles. It provides a useful synopsis of why laying workers develop in a colony, and what a beekeeper can do about it.
Click on the link to read the full article: Laying Workers