lost queen in my observation hive

[kinderbee]

Hi everyone and thanks in advancefor your advice and experience.

I began an observation hive in my elementary school classroom at the end of April.  All had been going well.  The colony drew out the top frame rapidly and our queen was laying nicely.  We watched our eggs develop into larvae and then pupa and eventually had pretty much a whole frame emerge.  Meanwhile comb building in the other 2 frames moved more slowly, but progressed and honey and pollen were being stored in the bottom frame. 
At the end of May I noticed that after the emergence the empty cells were not being refilled with eggs.  The majority of the frame was empty.  The other two frames held no eggs that I could see.  I thought maybe she doesn't immediately reuse the cells and would move to the lower frames.  She didn't.  I didn't find the queen, but wasn't sure that she was gone.  There was no evidence of a swarm leaving.  No queen cells built.  No apparent loss of bees.
Meanwhile, I left for a 10 day vacation.  I got back yesterday and found that most of my gals are now gone.  About 25% remain and those have begun laying eggs and making drones (not tons though).  What do you think happened to my queen?
Can I save this hive?  I was thinking I'd add a frame of brood and requeen.  Will this work?  Any advice on requeening?

Thanks for your help.

Sue

[Cindi]

Sue, I am sorry to hear about this sad thing with your observation hive.  That is a wonderful thing to do for your students, my hat off to you.  I know that you will get some good advice from some experienced beekeepers in this forum.  They will be able to give you some great insight.  Have a wonderful day, great life.  Cindi

[Holycow]

Hi,
Laying workers cause problems. From what I've seen once they start, they don't stop. Eventually it's Drone Central. If it were me I'd get a couple full frames of eggs and brood from another hive and then install them. Make sure to remove the existing frames of bees and walk about 20 feet away and brush them all (workers) off. If I remember correctly the laying workers can't fly (?) So they will not get back into the hive.  With any luck you'll see an occupied queen cell somewhere soon after that. I have used this tactic before with success. If the general population is low you may want to add some workers using the newspaper method.
Perhaps there is an easier way that someone with more experience can advise?
My two cents.
--Jeff

[Brian D. Bray]

Sounds like it's time to start over on the observation hive.  I would not only shake out the frame of bees to get rid of the laying workers but I would replace it with another frame of brood and bees from another hive.  Since it is primarily an observation hive you can take the time to grow a new queen.  Use a frame that has freshly hatched eggs and/or fresh eggs so that the bees can develop their own queen. 

An observation hive is such a small representative of a normal hive it is much easier to start over in the case you discribe than play with trying to convert a laying worker hive to a queenright hive.  Such convertions can be problematic at best, so do it right and start over.

[Michael Bush]

I had an observation hive go laying worker. I tried to give it a frame of bees with a queen from a nuc and shake the laying worker hive out.  They returned, balled the queen and killed her.

I think the simplest is to block the entrance, shake them out, wait for them to dissipate and start over.  If you can find someone with a frame or two of brood and a frame of honey you should be able to get going again.  If you do it soon they may get strong enough to overwinter.

[Understudy]

I am going to be slightly different here.

Take the bees and shake them out about 150 yards from the current location.
If you can shake them out over a whilte blanket do so. If you can find the laying worker remove and kill her. If you can't find her it's ok. She can't fly back from that distance.

Return the observation hive and connect the entrance and exit tubes. The bees will start to fly back to the hive. The bees need to go at least 24 hours without a queen or laying worker. You can then add a queen in cage with attendants. If your observation hive is a standard stack, the queen cage should be able to be placed inbetween the frames on it's side. You may want to secure it there on top of the frame with some 2 sided tape.

You could swap the frames with some brood frames if you wanted to keep the numbers up.

The difference here is my method is a lot of work with no guarentees. You could do an outright replacement as others have disccussed. But you mentioned this is in a classroom. I see this as a great chance to teach.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[kinderbee]

Thanks everyone,

I found a woman raising queens about and hour and half away from me.  Picked up the queen yesterday morning.  Brought her home on a frame of  her brood with lots of nurse bees.

Took out the existing brood frame and got most of the original bees out, but not quite all.  Brought those that stayed on the frame home (about a mile from the school's obs hive, perhaps half a mile as the bee flies).

I installed the new queen, brood, and nurses and will see what happens.  I decided to leave the hive closed for three days and just feed, hoping to keep the old bees from coming back. On the other hand, I was thinking that they've been without a queen for at least a couple weeks now, and likely longer.  Isn't it likely that they'd readily accept the new one, given the amount of time they've been queenless?  I wonder if I should just open the entrance today....

I love this forum.  It amazes me how much expertise is out there--and how willing you all are to share it.  I sure appreciate everyones time.

Sue

[Brian D. Bray]

Once a hive turns laying worker it is very difficult to get the hive to accept a queen.  You essentually have to get rid of the laying workers, rendering the hive queenless once again, in order to have the new queen accepted.  Since its impossible to identify the laying workers by eye the easiest solution is to shake out all the bees from the hive so the laying workers can't return and then proceed with a regular requeening but delaying the insertion of the queen for a couple of days.

This is why you were given the advice you were--with an observation hive it is much easier, with such a low bee count to just start over.