Frame Guide › Queen problems
New Queen Laying Double Eggs: what it looks like on the frame
The queen you introduced started laying five days ago.
A small patch of eggs in freshly polished cells, a few with two eggs — but every egg sits in the bottom centre of the cell. A young queen sometimes doubles up in her first days of laying. A laying worker's abdomen is too short to reach the floor, so hers land on the side walls, often three or four to a cell.
Leave her alone and check again in a week
The doubles clear up as she hits her stride, and within a week or two you should see one egg per cell and a spreading pattern. Shaking out and brood-frame boosting are laying-worker fixes — using them on a good new queen would undo everything.
Easy to mistake for
- Laying WorkerA colony that's been loud and 'roary' for weeks. No calm hum.
- Drone-Laying QueenQueen is present, but the brood looks bumpy and raised all over.
Could you spot this with the lid off?
Read the Frame deals you 8 random frames. Say what you see, say what you'd do, and find out why. It's free and runs on your phone.
Drill queen problems → Mixed round (all 32 frames) →More queen problems
- Healthy Brood PatternJune · a strong colony, bees calm and covering the comb.
- Laying WorkerA colony that's been loud and 'roary' for weeks. No calm hum.
- Swarm CellsEarly May · booming population, bees boiling out the front.
- Supersedure CellsNothing dramatic. The pattern has just gotten patchy lately.
- Drone-Laying QueenQueen is present, but the brood looks bumpy and raised all over.
- Emergency Queen CellsYou rolled the queen ten days ago. This is the same colony now.
- Can't Find the QueenYou went through every frame twice and never saw the queen.
- Waiting on a Virgin QueenThis colony swarmed 16 days ago. No eggs, no larvae anywhere.
- Empty Queen CupsMid-April · the colony is building fast. Along the bottom bars you find these.
These frames are drawn to teach the pattern, and real frames vary. From The Alleman Apiary in Middletown, PA.