Requeening

Remove the drone-laying queen and introduce a new, mated queen to restore normal brood production. A mated queen lays fertilized eggs, quickly returning the colony to a healthy worker-bee brood pattern. This is the most direct and widely recommended fix for a confirmed drone-laying queen.

Why It Works

A drone-laying queen has either run out of stored sperm or was never properly mated. Replacing her with a verified mated queen immediately restores fertilized egg production, allowing the colony to rebuild its worker population within a single brood cycle.

Tips

• Confirm the queen is drone-laying (shotgun brood pattern, multiple eggs per cell) before requeening
• Use a candy-plug queen cage for slow-release introduction over 3-5 days
• Remove the old queen at least 24 hours before introducing the new one
• Check for queen acceptance after 3 days by inspecting for eggs near the cage area