"Laying worker or Drone laying Queen?"

[Dirksdonuts]

I had one hive that I carried out an artificial swarm on around seven weeks ago. The two hives stood 3-4 feet apart since then.

One hive never succesfully reared a new queen and the other swarmed about 3-4 weeks ago.

Both hives were now queenless. One of them started to show signs of improvement finding eggs however this turned out to be only drone brood laid randomly across several frames.

I shook this colony off the frames 10 days ago at about 300 metres and the flying bees turned up at the other one and begged their way in. This made a strong colony untiltonight i found that the drone laying has begun again in a messy pattern and some capped brood shows drones rather than workers.

What would be the best way forward for this colony please?

 

[Finman]

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You have a third hive. Give a larva frame to the worker layer.

It stops the worker laying and bye a mated queen, a new or such which professional beekeepr is going to renew. What ever you get, Or join a swarm.

 

[Dirksdonuts]

Finman your a star, many thanks i will lift a frame over tomorrow from my other hive. I will let you know the outcome in the next few weeks.

Many thanks again

 

[picton farm]

It may take tree weeks of adding a brood frame each week to get the workers to stop laying but each time I have done it, I have been able to introduce a new queen in the fourth week.
If you try too soon the the laying workers will kill the new queen.

 

[Andy Coleman]

Do you mean the one that swarmed was the colony on the original site, with the old Q in it (I.e. the artificial swarm)?

 

[susbees]

It may take tree weeks of adding a brood frame each week to get the workers to stop laying but each time I have done it, I have been able to introduce a new queen in the fourth week.
If you try too soon the the laying workers will kill the new queen.

Three weeks is proven as works most times from the literature. One week won't stop LWs enough....they must draw queen cells on the frame to show they should accept a queen. Don't try and reQ before then...

 

[Finman]

It may take tree weeks of adding a brood frame each week

WHAT!. He only add a larva frame that he sees, do hive start queen cell building. it takes only 2 days to see. BYE A LAYING QUEEN! Dont waste summer with rearing your own queen.

Another was is to bye at once a laying queen and start a nuc. When you queen lays in the nuc, you move a drone layer away and bees flye to the laying nuc. Worker bees stop laying. If hive has unmated queen, it stays in the moved hive.

 

[picton farm]

That would be fine if it was a drone laying queen and he could find and kill her but this sounds like a laying worker and so he needs to give the brood a chance to take effect. He said that the brood was irratic and over several frames and that really sounds more like a laying worker than a drone laying queen.
I have had a similar laying pattern with a drone laying queen once and in that case, after the three weeks brood adding there were still eggs being laid. I shook all the bees into a brood box with just one frame in it and then put the main brood box abouve it. The bees went up to look after the brood and I was able to find the queen quickly as I only had one frame to look at.
I hope this is helpful.
If you add a queen before you have solved the laying worker problem then you will have wasted your money as the worker(s) will kill her.