Queen cups with eggs in one hive and multiple eggs in another

[Oldbeavo]

Is it true that a laying worker starts as a young bee that has never left the hive?
This is the basis for shaking out a hive 50m from the original position and putting it back, adding eggs and brood, allowing the bees to return without the laying worker, as she has never orientated to the hive.
I am not sure if the mass disturbing causes the hive to reset and accept the new brood.
Comments please.

[TheHoneyPump]

The shake out thing and allow them to fly back is a myth. She flies just as well as all the other bees and follows along the nasonov trails.

The shake out method must have been miscommunicated pr misunderstood somewhere along the way in years past.  In my mind, and others, it has always been shake out with total hive removal.

If faced with LWs, there are only the two methods presented.  Do or try anything else at assured peril.

[ed/La.]

Preventing laying workers is so easy as long as you ocassionaly inspect your hive. Give it a frame with some eggs and larva every 9 or 10 days until you have a laying queen.  If you don't have the resources combine with one of your other hives. Laying workers is a non-issue  for  most beekeepers. I experienced it once in about 8 years.

[AR Beekeeper]

Oldbeavo;  I know of no studies that have addressed the age of the laying worker bees.  Studies have shown that a normal colony can have 7 to 45 percent of the workers in the colony with developed ovaries, the poorer the queen's quality the higher the percent of workers with developed ovaries.

The age at which a bee flies out to take a first dump and orient on the hive is only 6 days, so I doubt that shaking out at a distance really has much effect on laying workers not returning to the hive due to having not flown.  A colony will always accept a frame of brood, so shaking out the colony is not necessary to "reset" the colony to take the brood, and it is the odor of the uncapped worker brood that inhibits the laying workers.

My colonies are set out in pairs, so when I have a laying worker colony I just join it with its neighbor using the newspaper method.

[Michael Bush]

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

There are many myths about laying workers.  One is that there is A laying worker.

"More than half of the bees in laying worker colonies have developed ovaries (Sakagami 1954)..."-- Reproduction by worker honey bees (Apis mellifer L.) R.E. Page Jr and E.H. Erickson Jr. - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology August 1988, Volume 23, Issue 2, pp 117-126

"Reproductive honey bee workers have considerable fecundity, with laying workers in queenless colonies each producing c. 19-32 eggs per day (Perepelova, 1928, cited in Ribbands, 1953). "--Evidence for a queen-produced egg-marking pheromone and its use in worker policing in the honey bee FLW Ratnieks - Journal of Apicultural Research Volume 34, Issue 1, 1995 - Taylor & Francis

Another is that shaking them out will lose that one laying worker because she won't know her way home.  Obviously half the bees know their way home.  I have done shakeouts and there were NO bees left at the shakeout that didn't go straight home.

Another is that queenlessness is the cause.  It is not.  Broodlessness is the cause.