Hi Folks-
 
I'm having some trouble with laying workers in a queen rearing setup, and I'm
hoping to get some advice from some of you who may have already solved this
problem.
 
I'm trying to raise queen cells in a two-and-one-half deep, queenless,
starter-finisher hive.  After a few weeks, I find that laying workers are
developing and messing things up.  I start with pollen combs in the bottom,
emerging brood and pollen combs in the middle, and bees and honey in the top
super.  I add a frame of seven-day-old sealed brood (no open brood) to the
middle body every second or third day, taking out an empty comb, and change
out the pollen combs as they get eaten up.  Every third or fourth day I add a
frame with 51 grafts to the middle body, and take one with sealed cells out.
 I have three frames of cells in the middle body at one time.
 
This setup worked great for a while, producing nice, fat queen cells I can be
proud of.  Today, however, I opened up one of the builders I'm running this
way, and I found that the most recent graft of 51 cells had been completely
ignored, and the previous graft had been chewed away, except for two cells.
 When I went in to look for the problem (I thought I had a loose virgin), I
found laying workers in the bottom box.  I suspect I will see this problem
again, soon.
 
How can I keep a queenless starter-finisher from developing laying workers?
 I've been using swarm boxes and queenright finishers up to now, and I was
hoping to simplify things by just putting grafts into a queenless unit.  I
suppose I could add open brood to the builder to inhibit the laying workers,
but then I'd be back to searching to for swarm cells once more.
 
Any ideas?
 
Kevin
Hollister, California