# Need advice



## JSneed (Jan 19, 2020)

I split a hive on April 7th that was about to swarm. Made 3 splits,each with at least 3 queen cells. Yesterday May 16th(39 days after split)I inspected them. One was full of capped brood. The other 2 there was no sign of a queen. One had capped drone cells so I think it’s gone laying worker. 

I have two hives that are swarms that were caught just over a month ago that are full of capped brood and will probably need more room soon. I was thinking of combining the two queenless splits with the two swarm hives, using newspaper.

Is there any reason I shouldn’t combine them with the swarms?


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

No reason why not that I can think of at the moment.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

I would shake out any colony suspected of having laying workers several feet in front of other hives. The alternative is to give the laying worker colony a frame of brood a week until they requeen themselves which cures the laying worker problem. If you have a drone layer queen, shaking out her colony will keep a good queen from being damaged in an unneccessary argument. Is the equipment required for the new sound colonies? Shaking the equipment out will make it available and most of the bees shaken out will beg their way into a colony and won't be in a position to mount an attack on a good queen.


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## JSneed (Jan 19, 2020)

Thanks for your replies. 

I did the combines this morning. I saw a bit of newspaper come out of one of them this as afternoon. We’ll see how it goes.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

JS it is exact ally what I would have done.

hope it works out

GG


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

The only thing I would have done differently, I would have taken a capping fork to the capped drones in the laying worker colony. Dont really want those drones in the merged colony, and definitely dont want them showing up at the DCA when I am running 32 mating nucs this season.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

JSneed: Please keep us posted on how this works. I have been trying several different things with LW hives this season and want to learn from your experiences. Thanks.


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## JSneed (Jan 19, 2020)

psm1212 said:


> JSneed: Please keep us posted on how this works. I have been trying several different things with LW hives this season and want to learn from your experiences. Thanks.


I will. Everything looks normal on the outside today. We’ll get into them this weekend if the weather cooperates. I’ll post what we find.


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## JSneed (Jan 19, 2020)

We looked in on them yesterday. Just a quick look under the super. They seemed to be doing fine. Lots of bees in the top boxes on both hives. Neither had started on the supers. We decided to wait another week to go deeper.


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