Merging a drone laying queen

[Compostcritter]

Hi
I have a issue and I am not sure what to do for the best. I have a colony with a drone laying queen that I need to merge with a weaker colony, unfortunately I cannot find the drone laying queen. If I use the news paper method and merge will the two queens fight, or will the drone layer go back to being a normal worker? Any advise welcome I do not want to loose the colony, which will happen if I do not merge.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

If it's a drone laying queen, you have to get rid of her as she will fight with the good layer and might win - could also cause fighting amongst the two queen supporting factions..
If it's a drone laying worker - the new queens pheremones should supress the DLW's urge to lay.
So which have you got - DLQ or DLW ?

 

[pargyle]

Hi
I have a issue and I am not sure what to do for the best. I have a colony with a drone laying queen that I need to merge with a weaker colony, unfortunately I cannot find the drone laying queen. If I use the news paper method and merge will the two queens fight, or will the drone layer go back to being a normal worker? Any advise welcome I do not want to loose the colony, which will happen if I do not merge.

Are you sure it's a drone laying queen and not drone laying workers .. you may not have a queen in there if you can't find her. What's the temperament of the hive like ? Queenless colonies tend to be a bit grumpy...

There's a couple of recent threads on what to do with DLW ... they will probably give you some clear idea about your options ...

And no ... if it's a drone laying queen then she's a drone laying queen - she won't revert to being a worker as she never was a worker in the first place - just a queen that either did not mate or has run out of sperm ... squish job and new queen if you had found her.

Perhaps your first job should be to confirm whether you have a queen in there ... again, there's a good thread in here somewhere about methods of finding queens that are hard to find.

 

[TOBY-3652]

I had one of those. Couldnt find the queen, so put a queen excluder under the brood box then another brood box under the excluder, smoked them all down, still couldnt find the queen. Then i took the new brood box 100 yards away, put the old box back where it was threw all bees out.... Checked it 5 days later for eggs. No eggs so then united it.. I thaught it was a drone layer, but now not sure. Anyway there doing well now

 

[REDWOOD]

If the weaker colony is less than 3 feet away take the DLQ colony away and shake the bees out then put the weaker colony where the DLQ hive was, hopefully the bees from the DLQ colony will unite with the weak colony.

 

[Compostcritter]

Sorry should have said drone laying worker! Does this make a difference to my problem?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Makes it slightly easier I'd say

 

[Compostcritter]

Does tat mean merging would be no problem? They would'nt fight?

 

[richardbees]

I definitely wouldn't merge but shake the bees out onto the ground.... they'll all eventually find the other hive but will have to go in and be checked by the guard bees.....
,,,,,merging allows 'bad' bees in through the back door.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Shaking them out and leaving them find/beg their way into the other hive is easier sort of than uniting, but in this case what bad bees? a drone laying worker who, once the strong queen pheremones in the Q+ colony take hold will revert to her old worker bee self before shuffling off the mortal coil in a few weeks

 

[pargyle]

There's a couple of previous threads about what to do and the various options you have:

Try this one:

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5095

and very recently this one:

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=26031

 

[richardbees]

' ' = figure of speech

 

[RosieMc]

Got the same problem here. When it finally stops raining I'll be shaking the DLW hive of bees out by the methods described