There has been lots of chat here about what to do with laying workers.
Quite a few people talk of shaking the colony out, as if laying workers couldn't fly which of course they can.
...
RAB is quite correct. It is the bees that police laying. The queen in a laying worker unite would not go hunting out all the laying workers.
Shaking out laying workers is the conventional, routine response.
There was a recent discussion about the unconventional (misconception?) shaking out of a Drone Laying Queen colony.
Shaking out is to break up the colony. Not to sort fliers from non-fliers.
Breaking up the colony is necessary because of what happens to "worker policing" in a Laying Worker colony.
Half-sisters unite with their own half-sisters to raise their eggs. And they defend them against other similarly-minded sisterhoods.
And those sisterhoods regard a real Q as being as much of a threat to their offspring as the threat from other sisterhoods. It is the Laying Workers sisterhoods that would go hunting for the Q !
Shaking out the colony breaks up those sisterhoods.
Individual bees have to beg their way into (hopefully plural) different colonies, where the 'pecking order' is well established, and they are there on sufferance. They are in no position to gang-up with enough of their own half-sisters to mount a coup against the resident Q.
Any eggs laid by the incomers will be "policed" out of existence by the existing colony's workers.
But if you unite a Q+ colony with a colony of Laying Workers, the sisterhoods see the real Q as a threat, and are
likely to try and attack her.
Bees being bees, little is 100% certain, but that is established as being massively the most likely outcome.
Laying by workers is inhibited not by Q pheromone, but by (worker) brood pheromones.
And it takes a while (weeks I believe) to "turn off" laying workers by new exposure to brood pheromones.
Laying Worker colony - shake it out.
Drone Laying Queen - remove her, then unite with a Queenright colony.
Don't confuse them!
