> I have never seen workers lay in a normal laying pattern - always just the 
> odd cells here and there.

I have often seen regular patterns in laying workers.  Just recently, I 
deliberately made a nuc queenless to make it have laying workers for a field 
day to show others what a hive with a laying worker looks like. 
Unfortunately, I left it a bit late and it had not become a laying worker in 
time.  When I came back to it a week after the event laying workers had 
commenced and it was in a regular pattern.

> A normal laying pattern with drone brood in worker comb would suggest to 
> me that an unmated queen was trapped above the excluder.  This can 
> sometimes happen during manipulation when a newly hatched queen flies and 
> then lands back in the supers before the roof is put on.

No doubt that could happen.  In the two instances I saw, the workers had 
stopped laying drones and the sealed brood was the only evidence.  If it was 
an unmated queen, would it stop laying?

Trevor Weatherhead
AUSTRALIA
Coming to Apimondia in Australia in 2007? 

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