>1. Can there be more than one laying worker in a hive?

Yes

>2. Does a laying worker produce the pheremones that a laying queen does?
>Does the hive think there's a queen present?

Yes

>3. Does a laying worker's behaviour mimic a queen, such as the tendency to
>scoot to the dark side of the frame?

No idea.

>4. Does she still forage?

Maybe, no idea.

>5. How long will she live? Normal foraging worker life or longer because
>she mayh not be foraging?
>

Must be awhile or maybe she just gets replaced by other laying workers as
the older ones die off.  Because you can offer frames of brood for them to
raise a queen (which they won't do because they don't realize they need one)
and the drone laying can go on much longer than 6 weeks.

>I've read conflicting remedies for a wive with a laying worker, what is the
>most effective - can the hive be saved, is it hopeless or a lot of effort
>with marginal
>results?

What has worked well for me is to place a screen on top of a strong hive
with a young queen (remove any honey supers).  Then place the queenless,
laying worker hive on top of the screen.  The bees in the top box can't
leave the top hive and forage and so they don't lose their orientation to
the original hive site.  They can however be fed through the screen and
obtain the queen pheromone that way.  They will kill or maybe suppress
activity of the laying workers.  After 5 days I remove the top hive back to
its original location and provide a queen 24 hours later.  They usually
accept it well and their eagerness can be assessed by the degree of
queenless activity they display (roaring/fanning). This method is no
different than the traditional method used in combining hives to eliminate
laying workers except that it maintains 2 separate hives when you are done.
Hope this helps.
James Ireland

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