Tim Vaughan wrote:
>
> Susan, if the bees are past a certain age, will they really be able to take
> care of your new queen? And will they be able to feed and care for new
> brood? If you really want to save the hive, and are willing to do extra
> work, you could put some sealed brood into the middle of the hive, then
> wait for them to hatch. Then put another frame of partially sealed brood in
> at the same time as your new queen. Otherwise, you could do as Bill
> suggests and combine, to get extra productivity out of one of your other
> hives.

I appreciate Tim's suggestion, and it might work, but all it did for me
when I did it was to postpone the inevitable and the colony was dead by
spring or earlier. A waste of a good queen adn frames of brood and bees.
Like I said, you do not end up with laying workers unless something is
wrong somewhere, and why keep it alive to kill again.

Sounds like a B horror movie... but then, laying workers are Bee
horrors.

Stay with the good and get rid of the bad. Split a good one and you will
continue with the good. I do not know how may times, when I started
keeping bees, that I tried to keep runt colonies alive because of false
economics, only to keep alive all those bad traits. Since I raise my own
queens, it was terminally stupid to pass on bad genes.

Consider - to rescue the laying worker hive you need to use frames of
brood and a lot of hope. With the same frames of brood and bees and with
a couple of honey, you can start a nuc and a new colony. And all with
good bees and not bad ones.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine