One of my splits just didn?t work out this year and it has been queenless all summer. I?m not one that can just let it go. I have a nuc that I really need to get growing so I thought I might try a combine with the two.
The queenless hive has a drone layer of some kind. Either a queen or a worker.
I was thinking of doing a combine with screen and leaving it in two boxes for a couple of weeks. I was told somewhere that a laying queen can suppress a laying worker over time. Does that sound correct?
Aroc {I was thinking of doing a combine with screen and leaving it in two boxes for a couple of weeks. I was told somewhere that a laying queen can suppress a laying worker over time. Does that sound correct?}
I have not heard this, but consider there are many tricks I have yet to learn. Kinda sounds logical. I don?t see any harm. I say try it and we will both learn if you keep us posted. If the laying workers keep laying you can always do a shake out later.
I usually do a shake out ,,,,,,I hate losing the young nurse bees but there is always hope another hive will accept them.
Blessings
The problem with just using a screen is that the queens pheromones are not being passed around to the bees in the queenless hive. You would get some of the open brood pheromones but I recommend that you move a couple of frames of open brood/eggs up to the queenless hive and put it on top of the screen.
There is a good chance they will still make a new queen. You may have to repeat adding the open brood.
Jim
I've used this method with success before although there are more than one way to solve this issue. Depending on how strong and how many frames of bees you have in the queen less hive, distributing the hive resources one frame at a time to other strong hives will solve this issue.
Let's say, for example, that this queen less hive has only 5 frame of bees. You can find 5 other strong queen right hives to put one
frame of bees in, distributing the hive resource this way.
With a strong hive taking over the weaker frame of bees, the LWs don't even have a chance. The strong hive will suppress these
LWs over time with minimum efforts.
If this method does not work for you then I will give you option #2 to try. :)