# laying worker hive



## reginabee (May 15, 2008)

Wondering if any of you have encountered laying worker hives...it is really bad. We shook the entire hive to the ground with the hope that the laying worker(s) would be too heavy to fly back...well, one of them must have caught a piggyback ride back to the hive and we are back at square one. They had a queen cell they had built with some brood we gave them to look after...they are all drones and i am pulling my hair out to try and figure out how and if to save them. :bash:


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Ok if you have two or more hives this will work.
Take the laying worker hive about 50 yards away from the stand. Move a strong queen rite colony in the place of the one with the laying worker and remove about five frames of brood with eggs.
When the move is complete reduce the entrance a bit then go shake all the bees from the laying worker frames, a brush helps. Move the hive and frames back to where you had thge strong colony and add the five frames of brood with eggs and nurse bees. Place the extra five frames in the strong colony where you got the frames with eggs.

Since the colony in the laying worker spot is now queen rite the workers will take care of any laying worker that returns to the colony, protecting their queen.
Foragers will return to the stand that now holds the stuff from the laying worker colony minus the laying worker who will return to the oreaition site.

You can do the same thing and add a boughten queen to the hive that was queen less.

 Al


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## reginabee (May 15, 2008)

Thanks Al. Good advice, although I am not looking forward to shakin those bees out again, although, being they are mostly drones I guess the stings are less Another of my hives is queenless for a much shorter period of time so I will act quickly before the workers take over again! Wish me luck! Take care. Maria.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

Normally I find the shook out bees more intrested in getting back to their home or where it had been at least.

You need to ask yourself, Why are my colonies going queen less?

Could be your to ruff when doing inspections.
Allowing frames that the queen maybe hiding on to hang out side a box, or lay on the ground.

 Al


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

When do you think the queen cell will hatch?

Wouldn't she take care of the problem?


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

When there is a laying worker in the hive she sends out a phmone as a queen even though a false one. The workers or the laying worker there for will not allow the real queen to live. It has proven impossiable to requeen a laying worker colony with a caged queen for the same reason also.
There can be more than one false queen in the colony also.

Just shake them in the grass away from the hive and start over. I normally even take the laying worker colony to a different yard to shake out.

 Al


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

AH! Thank you!


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## thequeensblessing (Mar 30, 2003)

We have successfully requeened a drone-layer hive on several occasions. You can introduce a new queen using a push-in cage (best option), or you can put a frame or two of open brood in the hive (open brood=no pheramones). Do this once a week for a couple of weeks and they usually start their own queen. We've also had success putting a frame with a young queen cell on it in the laying-worker hive. We've never lost a queen to a laying working, ever, and we've never done the shake out method either.


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## thequeensblessing (Mar 30, 2003)

I wonder how effective queen grafting would be in this situation?


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## Michael Bush (Oct 26, 2008)

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm


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