On 8/28/2016 4:12 PM, Rebekah Lee wrote:
>
> Considering all or most of the laying workers make it back and "thinking"
> they're queen right, are they likely to foil a re queening attempt?
>
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>

In my experience it's extremely difficult to requeen a hive with laying 
workers if you try it by conventional methods.  I have found some 
success though when employing one or both of the following tricks:

a) Insert a frame of open worker brood from a queenright hive. After 2 
or 3 weeks the laying will cease and the bees, albeit ancient by then - 
apart from the ones from the given brood,  will often accept a queen.

b) Give a protected queen cell.  They can't prevent the new queen's 
emergence and often seem to accept the virgin as a supersedure queen.

Unfortunately both these methods will give you a hive that is severely 
weakened.  It's better to prevent laying workers in the first place by 
giving a queenless colony an occasional frame of brood while you 
organise a new queen for them.  In addition, if the brood is of good 
stock you can let them raise an emergency queen from it.  I find workers 
start laying around 3 weeks after the last of the brood emerges.

Steve Rose
North Wales

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