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Multiple eggs per cell are not an absolute sign of a laying worker because when a newly mated queen begins laying, she may lay more than one egg per cell. Egg position Egg position in the cell is a good indicator of a laying worker. A queen bee's abdomen is noticeably longer than a worker, allowing a queen to lay an egg at the bottom of the cell.
Cloake board insertion: The Cloake board is placed between two hive bodies when the queen is known to be in the lower hive body. Because a Cloake board either contains or is used with a queen excluder, the laying queen will be restricted to the lower hive body from this point forward.
When a colony accidentally loses its queen, it is said to be queenless. [95] The workers realize the queen is absent after around an hour as her pheromones in the hive fade. Instinctively, the workers select cells containing eggs aged less than three days and dramatically enlarge the cells to form "emergency queen cells".
Workers do not oviposit when queens are present, for a variety of reasons: colonies tend to be small enough that queens can effectively dominate workers; queens practice selective oophagy; the flow of nutrients favors queen over workers; and queens rapidly lay eggs in new or vacated cells.
Butler may have misinterpreted the queen's function when he found queenless colonies sometimes develop eggs laid by "laying workers", however there is no doubt he saw the queen as an Amazonian ruler of the hive. As an influential beekeeper and author, his assertion that drones are male and workers female, was quickly accepted.
Laying worker bee – this worker will produce only drone bees Langstroth hive – commonly seen in developed countries as stacks of white or muted colored boxes at the edges of fields and orchards [ 2 ]
Workers of A. florea, like those of the species A. mellifera, also engage in worker policing, a process where nonqueen eggs are removed from the hive. Queenless A. florea colonies have been observed to merge with nearby queen-right A. florea colonies, suggesting workers are attracted to queen bee pheromones. [33]
The queen is normally the only egg producer. However, when a colony becomes queenless, some workers which have intact, undeveloped ovaries may develop them and thus become capable of laying more eggs. [4] So in certain colonies, a singly mated worker called a gamergate reproduces as the functional queen in that colony. [5]