Laying Workers

babsbag

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Checked on my hive today and it appears that I have laying workers. Only drone brood and not much of it. Not many bees either and no queen to be found. I don't have another hive to give them brood so do I bring the hive home and just shake them off into my new nucs (which I am getting tomorrow) or do I try to give them a queen and just hope it works.
 

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If you just give a queen, chances are the laying workers will kill her. I would kill them off and start fresh.
 

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I know I can't just stick a queen in there, need brood and I don't have any. Just seems like such a waste of bees. There is some brood phermone you can buy but very very expensive.

Also read about putting in a queen in a push in comb cage, but you are supposed to put the cage over some emerging brood so she will have attendants. So if I have only drone brood I don't think that will work either.

The brood phermone sounds great, wonder why so much money and so hard to find.
 

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I know you loath to lose a single bee, but really... the few that are left will be dead in several weeks anyway and the drones that hatch are useless to you. You won't have any real brood for 2-3 weeks minimum and they will be needed in the hives you install the packages in... you won't really be able to afford to steal them for use in the existing hive. A replacement queen won't work without brood. brood pheromone will not help a new queen survive. I know you don't like it Babs, but killing of what remains is really the humane thing to do. :hu
 

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Yeah, this part of raising any kind of living thing stinks. I have a house full of plants to prove it.

Some say you can shake all the bees off a few hundred feet away and the bees that are foragers will return to the hive and the laying workers won't as they don't fly well. Some say it doesn't work.

The brood pheromone should suppress the laying workers and then a new queen should be accepted but the stuff is almost the price of pkg. of bees.
 

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