Dear Thomas:
I also had laying workers in two hives this year. Both came as third
generation from the same line of queens, and I suspect that inbreeding
may be the culprit. I'm ordering queens from as far away as possible to
try to vary the gene pool. Anyway, when this happened a seasoned
beekeeper was with me and had me cart the whole hive about 100 ft. away.
We cleaned the bees off of each frame, and set the hive on newspaper
atop a strong hive.(It had its own entrance up there). He said laying
workers can't fly and won't walk that far, because if they could get
back, they would kill any queen I might try to introduce. It worked. The
new hive is now combined, I lost only the bees I needed to loose, and it
produced a bumper crop of honey. The same thing happened with a "sister"
hive (same line) and I did the same process with great results. I lost a
two hives in number, but gained two much stronger hives, so it wasn't a
total loss.
 
Bev
 
(Thomas) (Cornick) wrote:
>
>    Just examined a hive of laying workers
> My first observation was that there were wax moth larvae small white wormlike
> things in the cells.
> On a closer look this turned out to be 2-3 eggs end to end on the cell walls.
> This is a hive which no matter what I did would not allow itself to be
> requeened nor would it raise it's own .
> I tried queen cage introduction, frames of eggs and brood, nuc and newspaper,
> all to no avail.
> In any case laying workers is a lot more obvious once you have seen it up
> close and personal.
> When I pull some supers next week the laying worker hive will get broken down
> and it's full combs of honey will be given to other hives it's bees will be
> given to the four winds.
>
> Tom in CT