Help! Both hives have laying workers.

[winginit]

Lost both my hives this winter, ordered two new packages. They arrived with lots of dead bees, and one queen cage had a live queen but all dead workers. Supplier told me it was my fault for accepting them from the post office, refused to do anything.

Three weeks later, both hives have lots of capped drone brood, no worker brood. I just got two new queens but don't know how to install without the worker queens killing them. One beekeeper told me to shake out the hives and hope the worker doesn't make it back, the other said that he has never seen that work. Both said that the hives were unlikely to accept the queens now that they have accepted the worker bee as their queen. That was a surprise to me.

In discussions with one of my beekeeping guys, I concocted an idea, probably crazy, so please make other suggestions. My idea is contingent on the assumption that there is only one laying worker. If there are more, then I'm toast.

I have two hives now, hive A and hive B. I propose taking 3 frames out of hive A (the bigger hive with about 6 total drawn frames) and put them in a nuc. So the laying worker is now in either hive A or the nuc. Then I put one queen cage in the nuc and one in hive A. At the same time, I do a paper combine of hive A and hive B.

Watchya think?

Plan B is give up and try to find some swarms. :-(

[iddee]

The best chance you have is just placing the queens in the hives with both corks left in. Leave them for 7 days and then remove the cork from the cages. If they don't accept them after that time, it's about hopeless.

BTW, if neither beek knows there are numerous laying workers in a hive, I wouldn't depend on their knowledge in the future. It's definitely lacking.

PS. It would be nice if you told who the supplier was.

[Brian D. Bray]

The best chance you have is just placing the queens in the hives with both corks left in. Leave them for 7 days and then remove the cork from the cages. If they don't accept them after that time, it's about hopeless.

BTW, if neither beek knows there are numerous laying workers in a hive, I wouldn't depend on their knowledge in the future. It's definitely lacking.

PS. It would be nice if you told who the supplier was.

So we can avoid him.

[asprince]

The best chance you have is just placing the queens in the hives with both corks left in. Leave them for 7 days and then remove the cork from the cages. If they don't accept them after that time, it's about hopeless.

If this does not work, I would take both hives to another beeks hives and shake them out and let them boost the population of his hives.
Maybe he will give you a nuc or two when he splits.

Good Luck,

Steve

[winginit]

Ok, put the queen cages in and sprayed a little HBHealthy to eff up their pheromones, maybe I'll get lucky.

I thought there was a rule against naming bad suppliers on this blog...but no rule against it on my blog. I called the supplier again today and am getting the run around, whoopee. I hear it's not unusual.

Can you resist?  :evil:
http://hilltopbee.blogspot.com/

[Brian D. Bray]

The best chance you have is just placing the queens in the hives with both corks left in. Leave them for 7 days and then remove the cork from the cages. If they don't accept them after that time, it's about hopeless.

If this does not work, I would take both hives to another beeks hives and shake them out and let them boost the population of his hives.
Maybe he will give you a nuc or two when he splits.

Good Luck,

Steve

Better to dun him for a couple frames of brood to put in the hives along with the queens in their cages.

[asprince]

I have never been successful turning around a laying worker hive. Adding brood is a waste of time and weakens the doner. Cut your loses. Just my opinion.

Steve 

[fish_stix]

I've had real good success with giving them a frame or 2 of open brood and eggs. It's the only technique that has ever worked for me. I have a hive right now that had LWs and which we gave a frame of eggs/larva to last weekend. Looked in today and they have multiple queen cells on that frame. However, Winginit has no access to frames of eggs and brood so it's a moot point. Looks like he's doing the only possible thing with the resources he has. Worth a try!

[sc-bee]

Wasn't there a thread last year about a special full frame to put your queen in to gain acceptance in this kind of situation. Of course it would take some knowledge to build the frame and the right isze wire where the queen could not escape and the worker not get to her.

Was it Robo?

[Michael Bush]

A frame of brood every week for three weeks has never failed for me.

A queen cell will succeed about half the time.

Introducing a queen will almost never succeed unless you have emerging brood and a push in cage.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm

[Robo]

Wasn't there a thread last year about a special full frame to put your queen in to gain acceptance in this kind of situation. Of course it would take some knowledge to build the frame and the right isze wire where the queen could not escape and the worker not get to her.

Was it Robo?

Yes, I built a queen introduction frame for Irwin a while back that has been making it's rounds through forum members.

Check out here -> http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,23359.msg180454.html#msg180454

Far as I can tell Homer was the last to have it, if interested, I would start with him -> http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php?action=profile;u=5262

[Curtammy]

2 years ago i had a hive with workers laying.  My fix was simple, but maybe just lucky.  I ordered my normal kind of queen and put her in the hive. left the cover over the sugar cap for 1 day.  Then removed the cap and let them eat the sugar away and free her.  My thought on it was that since she was a 'true' queen, her pheromones would of course be stronger then the laying workers.  And the bees would naturally 'hopefully' go to her rather then an impersonator wanna be queen.  And thats what happened I think.  She most likely killed the laying workers or the others did for her.  Because she was fine and laying strong a week later.   Thats my suggestion and experience.

If something else happened that made my system work then someone let us know so it can be kept for future reference.

[VolunteerK9]

I thought there was a rule against naming bad suppliers on this blog...but no rule against it on my blog. I called the supplier again today and am getting the run around, whoopee. I hear it's not unusual.

I think bad advertising is ok on here-good advertising that you make a $$ profit $$ off of is frowned upon. I didnt see it in the bylaws.

Can you resist?  :evil:
http://hilltopbee.blogspot.com/

Nope, I couldnt. Just added them to my list though.