Laying workers - and a plan

[GSF]

Okay, so I'm a bad parent.., I have a laying worker hive. Here's my plan, let me know if yall see any flaws in it. My hives are on a stand with five hives to the stand. My plan is to have the entrances to the laying worker hive and a queen right hive inches apart. I'm going to treat the laying worker hive as a trap out. I'm thinking the foragers will return and not being able to get in they'll go to the hive next to it. As the population dwindles down I'll keep removing frames & supers from the lw hive. I'm hoping since the foragers will have supplies the guard bees won't give them much a hassle.

[Eric Bosworth]

I suppose that might work. But why not just add a frame of brood every week for a few weeks? that should fix the laying worker problem and give them a chance to raise a new queen?

[Modenacart]

Adding a queen seems to always work for me.


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[little john]

I think it's a rather clever idea.  Installing a queen is always accompanied with some risk, and adding brood takes time and resources - whereas this is fairly quick.  If it were me, I'd go for it.  If you do try this - keep us posted, as it might become a useful technique to store away in the ol' memory bank.

LJ

[KeyLargoBees]

Should work...I guess I am not as gentle a bee parent as you LOL....I dealt with an LW hive this weekend.....4 weeks of open brood/egg frame inserts and they refused to pull queen cells. I did the dump and shake over the weekend......I just got the hives close <6 inches.....and then remove LW hive and did a shake and dump on it... observed for an hour (while drinking a beer or 3) and saw no fighting there was a lot of milling around as they looked for the old hive but after an hour or so the milling swirl was gone and it appears all bees went into the hives on either side of the empty spot on the stand...ultimately there was maybe 2 cups of bees that stayed where the shake out was...assuming it was the LW and maybe a few bees too young or injured to fly well.

[little john]

Sounds like you've had about as much luck as I have with donating brood combs to a L/W hive.  I once tried this throughout one long summer - forgot how many frames I gave them - it became a battle of wills towards the end.  The bees won.
I swore never again, and never have.  I've since been firmly in the 'shake-out' camp.

But - this idea of filtering-off displaced foragers sounds good. I guess there would still be a need for a mini shake-out onto a ramp with the last couple of hundred bees, but that amount would be a breeze for the guards to process.

LJ

[GSF]

LJ, or others, will the guards recognize a laying worker and treat it like an invading queen?

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm

[little john]

LJ, or others, will the guards recognize a laying worker and treat it like an invading queen?

They should do (providing they've read the book ... ) - as it's because the laying worker smells like a queen that the colony has been under the impression that they have a queen in residence, and that all is well with the world.
LJ

[GSF]

...Oh well. It did work out. It seemed like the day I put the funnel on the hive the others started robbing it. I have no clue where they were getting in at. I'll inspect in the next day or so to see if I left a crack somewhere. It seemed a lot were concentrated on the eve of the top cover.

I've always heard that once a hive goes queen less and gets weak the others pick up on it and start robbing. This isn't the first time I've seen this.

[GSF]

x2, another 3 frame queen less nuc got robbed out yesterday. I was pretty sure it was queen less. Now I'm very sure. I have another 2 frame nuc (week old swarm) with a queen and so far they're not being bothered. That makes 3 queen less nucs robbed out this week.