What do you think changed your view? I agree it is best to aim for strong hives.
In year 2 we realized our two strong hives produced lots of honey, and our weak hives produced no surplus, needed feed in the fall. When we tallied it all up, 2 strong hives produced enough honey for us to use, and sell a little. All of the money we got, ended up going into sacks of sugar for the weak hives. Had we combined the weak ones into another strong hive, would have been a totally different story. Fewer colonies, more product. And that was the big light bulb, during the first year and early in the 2nd year, we were focussed on counting colonies. Having produced nothing, that was the only metric we had to work with in our minds. Once we got to the point of actually producing surplus honey, a big light bulb went off. The end goal is product, not colony count, and one strong colony will out produce 3 weak ones. I dont think one really clues into this, until you see a strong colony at work, right beside one or more weak ones, and then sit back thinking it thru after extracting.
In year 3, we clued into a few more details. It was our first year to have drawn honey supers. I put all the drawn supers onto the strongest two of our colonies rather early in the season. By May 1, we were extracting maple honey from those supers, and putting them back on the colonies. Conversly, the colonies that had undrawn frames in the supers, were making swarm preps. I did happen by the bee yard one afternoon, and found a rather large swarm hanging in a tree. I was out of 10 frame gear at the time, so I dumped them into a 5 frame box, but they didn't fit. I put the last two 5 frame boxes I had on top of it, and left them. They were in a 3 high stack of 5 frame boxes, to which I had added a single frame of open brood from another hive, to anchor the swarm. 2 weeks later, I had a dozen drawn frames in that stack. These are all points of interest where I've learned something, and I am trying to combine all the lessons as we move ahead.
So for the purpose of dealing with a laying worker or drone layer, I've come to the conclusion, since we dont have a large surplus of drawn comb to work with, the brood comb in a drone laying hive is more valuable than the bees when it's very early in the season. If I can present that comb to a healthy laying queen, we will get more brood hence bees, and that will lead to a honey crop. Fighting to rescue the drone laying colony, just results in frustration, and at best, a weak colony. A weak colony is only helpful if your desired end result is colony count, and it's actually detrimental if the final metric you will use to tally success in the season, is weighing the amount of honey produced. But no matter what your metric is for measuring success, a colony laying drones is not going to help by any measurement, so bite the bullet and deal with it.
