[Joseph Clemens]

The official research word is that most all hives have laying workers all the time. Hives with mated/laying queens and active brood nests generally mask the problems that laying workers can create - those problems can and do develop in colonies without mated/laying queens and active brood nests.

 

[Joseph Clemens]

I'm with fatscher on the wonder of growing your own nucs and queens.

Partially t:

I have been a beekeeper since the late 1960's, then recently my wife got sick with MS and I had to quit my regular job in order to be her full-time caregiver. Now I spend almost all-day, every day with her (she is my very best friend). I also spend more time gardening and tending our bees. Before my wife became ill it wasn't too much of a problem to keep those frustrating AHBs, but now that she can't run away (she's in a wheel chair, especially when she's outdoors) if the bees become grumpy. So I decided to see if I could economically requeen our hives with a gentler strain of bee and keep them gentle. Our budget allowed for us to buy four queens about every four years. Then I would pick the best of those four queens to be my MQ (Mother Queen). I would move the MQ into a two-super stack of 5-frame medium nucs, that made it easier to keep her supplied with empty frames to lay in so there would always be young larvae ready to graft.

Anyway, I started a few nucs, at first, so I could more easily introduce the imported queens, then I added more nucs so I could mate the queens I raised. Eventually I added even more nucs so I could keep plenty of extra queens and bees to straighten out full-size colonies that were having problems. If you have a colony that becomes overrun by laying workers, it can often be corrected by combining a strong nuc (with young laying queen) to them, especially with using a double-screen board for a few weeks first. Nucs are an excellent management tool, that can be used in many different ways.