Over the years, I've never really had to deal with laying workers. My last work trip (2 weeks) coincided with a colony going queenless a day before I was leaving. I had hoped they would make it but the spring urge was to much and I came back to a hive with what seems like laying workers, multiple eggs, eggs /early larvae not centered in the cells.

I have 3 queens coming mid week. I was planning one splitting a very large double colony with an old queen running out of sperm into 3. Last year my purchased queens all failed and I had to re-introduce my retired queens into several colonies. I don't plan on trying to weed out the laying worker (no time). I was just going to shake them out front and remove the hive box to force the bees to choose, drift to another box, or die. The other colonies in this bee yard are queenright but spring was late to come and they don't really have much brood to share and the big colony is going to be broken down into three 6 frame nucs.

Option 1:
Shake the bees out before I do my 3 way split 

Option 2:
Shake the bees out after the new queens are in (I plan to split the 6-7 frames for brood 3 way)


The laying worker box is jammed pack with bees, the deceased queen laid a storm before dying (I found her body).

Has any real studies ever been done on how many of the bees actually make it to a hive. What happens to the younger bees? I assume they crawl around and eventually die.

What distance should I be shaking these bees off? Would shaking them 10ft from the hive on plywood with a split ramp defeat the purpose of trying to shake off the laying worker bees? Will the remaining colonies defend against a laying worker?

Any advice would be helpful.

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