Dan Brown writes:
"better to give the hive a comb of eggs and hope they'll superscede the
drone-layer, or should I buy a queen and try to introduce her after
dispatching the drone-layer"?
From my personal experience, I had a drone layer but thought my hive was
queenless so I added a frame of brood with eggs. They did not produce a new
queen to supercede her. They just raised them out into workers. I then
introduced a new queen in a cage and when she finally got out, they balled and
killed her. That was when I finally searched relentlessly until I found the
drone-laying queen and removed her when I had another mated queen in the mail.
My introduction after removing the drone layer was successful, but I lost about
a month during that time. That hive didn't become productive until the
following year.
Layne Westover
College Station, Texas