# Re-combining a split, now that one has a laying worker. (Madness?)



## wertzsteve (Dec 28, 2015)

I would wait on the two swarm cells.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

wait and see. some drone cells are expected in a large healthy hive this time of year. young queens can lay multiple eggs in one cell and have drone eggs scattered about. wait and see. a laying worker problem starts when there is no capped brood and develops over time. wait and see what happens. from your entry above, my guess is you are in good shape.


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## Kabnetz (Jun 9, 2016)

Wouldn't you expect to see _some_ worker brood? There is nothing capped but the scattered drone comb... unless... Are you suggesting that once the larva I can see is capped, it may turn out that some of it is actually worker? I guess I am just nervous because it's been over a month since I separated them from the queen. I did leave them capped queen cells --so I would have expected a shorter timeline than if they raised one from an egg-- and I don't yet see any capped worker brood. (plus drones; plus multiple eggs/cell) But I guess I can be patient, and wait. Thanks for the replies.


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## tnapiarist (Jun 23, 2016)

Kabnetz said:


> Wouldn't you expect to see _some_ worker brood? There is nothing capped but the scattered drone comb... unless... Are you suggesting that once the larva I can see is capped, it may turn out that some of it is actually worker? I guess I am just nervous because it's been over a month since I separated them from the queen. I did leave them capped queen cells --so I would have expected a shorter timeline than if they raised one from an egg-- and I don't yet see any capped worker brood. (plus drones; plus multiple eggs/cell) But I guess I can be patient, and wait. Thanks for the replies.


Can you post any photos of what you see? That may be helpful to assist further in your issue. 

I would not recombine that original queen with the laying worker hive, personally. While the common name is the "Laying worker" problem, it is likely that there are multiple laying workers and the laying worker(s) hive have a high rejection rate of introduced queens, so you'd be risking losing both, in my opinion. 

You should see some capped worker cells. You could also have a drone laying queen. 

I raised a few of my own queens this year in nucs from my established colonies. I returned to one nuc around day 23 and found 1-4 eggs per cell and no evidence of a queen. So, I just shook them out and removed the original hive. In your situation with a larger hive, I would probably try to salvage it by either A) waiting it out if there is any evidence of a queen in there or B) introducing a frame of uncapped brood for pheromone(s) to suppress the ovaries of the laying workers every 5-6 days until they start to produce another queen, if you have the resources to do that. If your other colonies are not strong enough to spare the brood, then I would wait another 2 weeks and if nothing, then just shake those bees out and split up the frames to use among your other colonies.


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## DanielD (Jul 21, 2012)

Your description does sound like laying worker, only scattered drone brood, dwindling population, multiple eggs in cells. Are the multiple cells just laying on the bottom of the cell and random, or are they pinned to the back wall? Are some of the drone cells in smaller worker cells? If so, probably laying worker. New queens can lay a few eggs in cells for a while, but why would there be queen cells? Laying worker hives do make queen cells sometimes, but with drone larva, so it won't go anywhere. 

If you have enough resources and the hive is strong enough yet, you can add eggs/brood once a week from your other hives and they can eventually make queen cells. That takes other resources and quite a bit of time. 3 weeks for a queen cell maybe, then 3 weeks or more for a laying queen. If you wait on the queen cells and it's laying worker, you may be waiting on nothing. The cells may disappear and you don't know if queens emerged or drone cells were torn down. They seem to get capped, then before emergence time, they are torn down. 

If you wanted to combine, I would first remove most honey and extract or place on other hives, then move the laying worker hive away from it's original location and letting the returning foragers find one of the other hives near the old location and beg their way in. That would be safe for the other hives and build them up since they are entering a hive not their own. You may be able to shake out the laying worker after it's dwindled more.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

I would give it a week to see if that "lots of larvae" turn into worker or drone brood. As a geneneral note by the time they have gone laying worker, you have a quickly dwindling population of old bees that have no real value. After trying to salvage LW hives through a variety of methods, I have come to the conclusion that it is better just to dump them out and give the drawn comb to another hive to clean up. Combining with a strong hive would probably be okay, but they could still kill the queen.


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## Kabnetz (Jun 9, 2016)

Thanks for all the advice. I did a shakeout, removing the whole hive from its spot in the yard. I put the most nectar-full frames on top of my strongest hive, for capping. Two more boxes with decent frames were salvaged and placed on top of the two nucs I'd just received the night before. All enterprising workers who were shaken out had a place to go (most headed for the closest hive). I had entrance reducers on for the occasion. A few weeks later, now, and all hives seem to be in decent shape (queens present).


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