Just when you think you’ve got this beekeeping thing figured out, you open a hive and spot an overabundance of drone cells—not just a few around the perimeters of the frames, but everywhere there should be worker brood, drone brood has taken its place. Not only is this extremely frustrating, it’s also a waste of a good hive and very difficult to fix. Why? The hive believes that it’s queenright and thus rejects most attempts to fix it by introducing a new frame of brood and a new queen. In all actuality, multiple brood frames may be required in the effort that may or may not work. Right off the bat, I want to communicate that, even with hard work and trying multiple methods, I’ve only ever been able to save drone-laying hives about 50% of the time at best. I typically recommend not even attempting to save drone-laying hives because of this. At the very least, don’t try to save a drone layer unless it’s at least five frames of bees.

Identifying a drone-laying hive

First, you need to be able to identify the cause of a drone-laying hive. One of two things could be happening.

• Your hive could have lost its queen and the bees failed to raise a new one. Eventually, without a queen, multiple worker bees (who are undeveloped females) will begin to lay unfertilized eggs, which will develop into “haploid drones”—basically, drones that can’t even mate properly with a future queen. The drone brood tends to be scattered throughout the hive, and the big giveaway is there will be multiple (4–12+) eggs per cell, often stuck to the sides and floor of the cell.
• Alternatively, you could have a queen that has completely failed and run out of sperm or, more likely, a virgin queen that never mated at all and is now laying unfertilized eggs. When this happens, there is often only one egg per cell and the pattern is much more compact in the hive, as would be the case with normal brood. But the brood is oversized and bumpy as the bees widen worker bee cells to fit drones.

In both cases, as noted above, the brood will be very raised and bumpy as the bees work to enlarge worker-sized cells to accommodate the larger developing drone brood.

Multiple eggs in a cell are a clear indication of a laying worker—not to be mistaken for a newly mated queen that may lay two or three eggs per cell until she gets the hang of it.

Killing a drone-laying hive and saving the comb

OK, you’ve identified a drone-laying hive and decided not to bother trying to save it because it’s fewer than four or five frames of bees; it’s getting close to winter, thus lowering their odds of rebounding in time; or you just don’t like the odds and don’t want to potentially waste the money on a new queen. What next? You’ve got a hive full of bees, honey, and distorted comb.

I would avoid joining that mess with another hive but try to save the comb for use next year. Here is what I recommend:

• Smoke the hive well and shake all the bees out at least 20 feet from any other hive. Some of the bees will eventually drift to other hives, but theoretically, they won’t let the drone-laying virgin or bees in if they make it to the other hives at all.

B402 Certan is the most advanced, effective, and economical product for the protection of your combs from damage by wax moths. It is a safe, environmentally friendly product. A single application will provide protection against wax moth right up through to the following season.

• As for the frames of honey, pollen, and comb, you can give them to other hives, store them in your freezer, or treat them with Certan (see “Storing Honey and Extracted Honey Frames”) for use next year. The frames of drone brood present a bit more of an issue. If they are more than half full of drone brood, I usually just throw them away. However, if the drone brood is sparse and not compact, you can freeze the frames to kill the drone brood, then put them on a hive next spring, where the bees will typically clean them up.

Super important: Avoid allowing the drone brood to emerge as they are basically a Varroa mite breeding ground.

Saving a drone-laying hive

If you do want to save a drone-laying hive, especially if you catch it early and it’s a hive with lots of bees, then here is the best way I’ve found to do so:

1. Identify if it’s workers laying or a virgin or failing queen. If it’s the latter, attempt to find and kill the queen. If you do find and kill her, skip to step 4.
2. Assuming no queen is found, shake all the bees out of the hive about 20 feet away.
3. Return the hive and frames back to their original location.
4. Remove the frames that are completely covered with drone brood. See above for what to do with them.
5. Replace the removed drone brood frames with new or used frames. Place them on the outside edges rather than in the middle of the hive.
6. Take one frame of brood from a stronger hive and put it in the center of the hive.
7. Put a caged queen in the hive (see “Requeening”). Check back about seven days later to see if the new queen is out and laying. If so, success! If not and the bees are actively raising queen cells on the brood you placed in the hive, you can let them attempt to raise their own queen. If that fails, then it is time to shake out the bees and save the comb for next year.