This year seems to be forming into a year of firsts (or maybe I was just too daggone blind to notice these things in the past!) In mid-March, I found a hive that would surely be ready for a Nuc by late March/early April. When I arrived, it was just barely able to create a Nuc, but I took one and noted that it should certainly be ready for a second Nuc by the third weekend in April. I did make a note that, given where this queen had been in mid-March, she really was taking her sweet time building up. She had done so well in February.

When I arrive this past weekend to take another Nuc, I very quickly find he queen. She is on a frame of eggs and capped brood that appears to be all Drone brood. So, I gently place the frame (with the queen) off to the side (actually, I just lean it up against the hive…), and begin to look for a few frames of worker brood and eggs. I find zero in the upper Medium. It is chock full of capped drone brood…

Maybe some folks will immediately say “Drone layer!”, but I sure didn’t. I had never had something like this before, in countless inspections. It was a White queen, but it never even dawned on me that I had a drone layer…until half-way through the bottom Deep! Now, I see that I clearly have an issue. I had thought the hive was activing strangely – now I can see why. Nothing but capped drone brood and eggs that are presumably drones. This isn’t the end of the world, but it was about to suck up a lot more of my time than I had anticipated!

Then, I come across what is definitely a worker frame. All small cells and no extension. I see eggs… I am now wondering if I should go whack that queen and make them create another one. I pick up one more frame and BOOM! There is ANOTHER daggone queen (not marked), clearly mated and doing her thing. She was laying (and had probably only been doing so for a week or so) in the bottom brood chamber while the marked queen was laying in the top brood chamber. I have heard folks say this can happen, but I had never seen it.

So, the bees took care of the problem. That hive is about to be flush with Drones (but the resources the workers have stored up will easily tide them over). Two more things crossed off of the bucket list – drone laying queen and two queens in the same hive!