Laying workers - did I do the right thing ?

[CB008]

I opened one hive on Saturday and instantly felt something was not right with patchy brood and drone cells everywhere. I shut up again and read Hooper and checked the forum which was most useful. I went back in and concluded it was laying workers without doubt so I followed Hooper and detroyed the colony. The problem was that it was an upper snelgrove colony so this resulted in the upper bees, no longer with a home, trying to enter the bottom colony - this resulted in a massive fight with loads of dead bees which was a little concerning. Did I do the correct thing ?

Secondly, I unpicked the drone cells from the frames I had removed and gave these brood frames back to other colonies as they contained capped honey and my colonies are very short on supplies. The uncapped larva were a bit of a mess however so I hope that thsi was a sensibel thing to do. I figured otherwise these combs would be useless.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

If there was a fight,then you did wrong!

Laying workers can be shaken off the frames in front of a good sized queenright colony at night. If you have an angled baord, they will walk up it and into the hive, as a swarm. Don't overload the recipient colony with the (potential) laying workers. You want the queenright hive pheromones to dominate the laying workers and suppress their unwanted practices. I've shaken bees into several colonies to strengthen all on several occasions - with no problems.

The bees will sort out the comb as they seem fit.