[bougepa]

I hadn't done a thorough check on one of my hives for about a month and a half. When I looked a few days ago, I discovered a bottom deep with very very scant and scattered brood, a high number of drones and no honey whatsoever. In the next deep i found 9 frames of solid honey with one frame of drone brood filling the entire thing(no pattern but complete coverage). I am assuming that I am queenless and that I've got laying workers on my hands. How do I get rid of the laying workers so that I can re-queen?

 

[Michael Bush]

It usually is more work than it's worth and doesn't always seem to work out, so I usually just shake them out and give all the frames to other hives. But if you have the time and want to spend the effort I'd do this:

If you have other hives, you can put in a frame of open brood and in about a week put in another frame of open brood. This should sufficiantly suppress the laying workers. In the meantime you could introduce a queen to a small nuc (I like two frame nucs) and then after a couple of weeks of having open brood in the hive combine the nuc with the hive. Or, if you don't want to do the nuc, after two weeks of some open brood in the hive, put a frame of emerging brood in with a queen in a push in cage over the emerging brood.

http://members.aol.com/queenb95/QnIntroInstr.html
http://www.honeyflowfarm.com/beeproject/images/puchincagelarge.jpg
http://homepages.uc.edu/~knauerbm/A%20Year%20of%20Honey.htm

 

[Mitch]

MB
Will this work if i want a laying worker hive to make there own queen.I have a hive i removed from a wall and lost the queen in the process and they look to be just starting into laying worker i am on my 2nd frame of brood/eggs so far.But i did not put the frames in one week apart.

 

[Michael Bush]

I have not tried to get them to raise a queen by this method but I have heard that it can work. Let me know.

 

[Mitch]

Ok will do

 

[bougepa]

Thank you Michael- the websites are very informative. I'm learning so much. I'm not sure which option I will take just yet but I do have 7 other hives on that site. It would be easy enough to shake them out of the LW hive and absorb the frames into the healthy hives.

 

[Michael Bush]

>It would be easy enough to shake them out of the LW hive and absorb the frames into the healthy hives.

The nice thing about this solution is you do it and you're done.

Everything else requires a lot of time and attention, but I have successfully requeened laying worker hives. I just can't say that all the time and money I've spent doing it was always worth it.