laying workers or just needs a queen?

[tandemrx]

we have an overwintered hive that seemed to be doing pretty good from outside viewing.  Population looked good and lot of activity at the entrance, pollen coming in.

Did a full inspection today and clearly the hive is queenless. for how long I don't know, but they have a decent worker population . . . but also a massive drone population.

There is essentially no brood in the 2 boxes.  less than a  handful of larvae.  Some capped drone brood, but not really that much.  I did not see any eggs and again, really no larvae to speak of.

Originally  when I looked at one frame last week and saw a ton of drones I was worried about laying workers but couldn't do a full inspection at the time.  Now that I have done full inspection, yes I saw tons of drone, but no larvae to speak of and couldn't see that there were eggs anywhere (and I am usually pretty good at seeing eggs).

So question is, did I have laying workers at one stage, but now they aren't active, and would they possibly take a queen if I just tried to introduce a queen.

I don't really want to introduce some brood/egg frames from another hive as I only have one strong hive and would like to keep that one that way.  I have 2 new package hives started a week ago - they won't be of much help for a bit.  I don't mind trying adding one queen to see if that will work, but do I treat it as a laying worker hive and shake out all the bees (never really understood why you do this (maybe Michael Bush can enlighten me on this part of his scheme for laying worker hives) or do I just give it a try with adintroducing a new queen.?

Bigger question is how do you determine if the hive is just queenless or has laying workers (I am kind of assuming if there is no larvae or eggs that it is unlikely to be overwhelmed with laying workers - but I don't know - haven't had to deal with laying workers before).

[Kathyp]

the best thing you can do is put a frame of eggs in there.  that will usually answer all your questions in a couple of days.  i understand not wanting to weaken your strong hive, but the queen will make up for it in short order.

my guess would be that they superseded the old queen and you have a new one in there.  either that, or there was a small swarm from that hive and you have a new queen.  is that little bit of larvae scattered or in a tight cluster?  laying workers scatter cells all over the place.  if it's not drone brood, you had a laying queen however long ago that brood was laid. 

maybe someone else can give you a guess, but the frame of eggs is the way to go.  no point in wasting the cost of a queen if you don't need one.

[tandemrx]

I did neglect to mention that there appeared to be no supercedure or swarm cells anywhere that I inspected (maybe didn't check 6-8 outer frames between the 2 boxes).  There weren't enough larvae to even say tigher cluster vs spread out.

Chances of me getting in these hives in the next week are slim (a few miles away and weather is looking horrid all week with rain and cold).  I could possibly sneak in a queen cage one day though between rain showers.

Still not that keen on putting brood/eggs in this hive.

[riverrat]

My guess is the hive has swarmed if the new queen has hatched they will tear down the queen cells. I would wait a week and recheck to see if you have a laying queen if not i would put a frame of eggs in the hive to se if they make a queen  cell. taking a frame of eggs fromt he strong hive will not hurt the population enough to notice.