Laying Workers. Why they are there and how to fix the situation.
Laying workers are caused by a lack of queen and Brood. In as little as two weeks the workers of the hive can begin to develop the ability to lay.
They do not have the ovaries of a queen, and are not capable of mating, so they can lay one to two eggs a day. In order to get three or more eggs per cell like is often seen in a laying worker hive, hundreds, and perhaps thousands of workers are beginning to lay.
I have seen many arguments about how to fix the situation, and weather you should even TRY to fix the situation..
If you have 20 or more hives I can tell you its faster and easier to shake them out and start over with their drawn comb.
If you have only a few hives, and need to save them, then I will go into detail about what I have done that worked to save them.
First.. Shaking them out.. It means taking the frames from the laying worker hive twenty paces or more away from your hives and SHAKING the bees off of them onto the ground. I do this in multiple places so the bees that return will return to multiple hives to strengthen them.
Remove the original box, or place a hive that needs a boost in field force in that location.
The bees will all eventually find a place to go.
In order to fix a laying worker hive, we have to understand why they started laying in the first place. Lack of Pheromone, both brood and queen, is what causes the workers to begin developing their ovaries. In order to reverse this, they need brood pheromone.
Some have said putting a queen in a cage into the hive will work. I have never had it work, but cannot deny that some claim it has.. A laying worker hive HAS queen pheromone, it is being put off by the thousands of laying workers. If Queen pheromone inhibited a laying worker, they would reach a point of balance, and it would be easier to fix the situation. Since it does NOT, they continue to develop until the vast majority of workers are laying..
If the situation is caught early, a single frame of open brood may be enough that they start emergency queen cells..
If the situation goes further, it may take two, or even three frames of open brood, spaced a week apart before they begin to draw emergency queen cells.
The Emergency queen cell is the key.
Once they start that cell, you can.. Allow them to make that queen, or remove the cells and install a mated queen in the normal manner. Obviously giving them a mated queen will be the fastest way to get them back to normal.
I have argued this process with others many times, and found this post on a forum by Michael Bush to be rather fitting and well stated;
Quote/ Michael Bush
The details become much more apparent when you have watched the progression into laying workers many times and observed the changes over time. At first there are no multiple eggs. Just scattered (very scattered) larvae and if any of that is capped it has a dome on it. There are also usually queen cells at this time, but they also have a dome cap on the end of the queen cell. You may even see an egg somewhere but not the multiple eggs people think of. This can happen as quickly as two weeks after there is no open brood. At this point one frame of open brood will resolve things or you can even introduce a laying queen by any of the typical methods (candy cage, push in cage etc.). If you give them open brood they will start viable queen cells and things will soon be fine. The next stage is when the egg police cannot keep up at all anymore and there are dozens of eggs in some of the cells. This is because there are now thousands of laying workers. The problem the colony now faces is not a lack of queen pheromone, it is an overabundance of it confusing them so that they no longer try to raise a queen. If queen pheromones would suppress laying workers this
point would never have been reached because there would be some point of equilibrium where there was enough queen pheromones to suppress any more laying workers developing. Three weeks of open brood is enough to suppress the laying workers and to get back to that level where they don't have that much queen pheromone and they now know that they need a queen and they also have the means to make one, so they do.
/End Quote
In Effect, Mr. Bush stated the same thing I have but in a much more understandable manner.
The problem with fixing laying workers, is that they are old bees. Adding frames of brood adds some younger bees to the hive, but you are taking resources and strength from your other hives to do this. IF, these bees are allowed to raise their own queen, the population will begin getting quite low by the time that queen starts laying, not to mention how low it will be by the time new bees start to emerge. Yes, it can be fixed at the cost of brood and bees / resources from other hives, but again, you are weakening those hives...
Would you be better off picking a weak hive and splitting it, and adding the new queen to it? Shake out the laying workers and put the hive with the new queen on the hive stand where the laying worker hive was....
Those bees strengthen the queen right hive.
As always, there are options, and this is only how I know works.
Scott
Some have said putting a queen in a cage into the hive will work. I have never had it work, but cannot deny that some claim it has.. A laying worker hive HAS queen pheromone, it is being put off by the thousands of laying workers. If Queen pheromone inhibited a laying worker, they would reach a point of balance, and it would be easier to fix the situation. Since it does NOT, they continue to develop until the vast majority of workers are laying..
If the situation is caught early, a single frame of open brood may be enough that they start emergency queen cells..
If the situation goes further, it may take two, or even three frames of open brood, spaced a week apart before they begin to draw emergency queen cells.
The Emergency queen cell is the key.
Once they start that cell, you can.. Allow them to make that queen, or remove the cells and install a mated queen in the normal manner. Obviously giving them a mated queen will be the fastest way to get them back to normal.
I have argued this process with others many times, and found this post on a forum by Michael Bush to be rather fitting and well stated;
Quote/ Michael Bush
The details become much more apparent when you have watched the progression into laying workers many times and observed the changes over time. At first there are no multiple eggs. Just scattered (very scattered) larvae and if any of that is capped it has a dome on it. There are also usually queen cells at this time, but they also have a dome cap on the end of the queen cell. You may even see an egg somewhere but not the multiple eggs people think of. This can happen as quickly as two weeks after there is no open brood. At this point one frame of open brood will resolve things or you can even introduce a laying queen by any of the typical methods (candy cage, push in cage etc.). If you give them open brood they will start viable queen cells and things will soon be fine. The next stage is when the egg police cannot keep up at all anymore and there are dozens of eggs in some of the cells. This is because there are now thousands of laying workers. The problem the colony now faces is not a lack of queen pheromone, it is an overabundance of it confusing them so that they no longer try to raise a queen. If queen pheromones would suppress laying workers this
point would never have been reached because there would be some point of equilibrium where there was enough queen pheromones to suppress any more laying workers developing. Three weeks of open brood is enough to suppress the laying workers and to get back to that level where they don't have that much queen pheromone and they now know that they need a queen and they also have the means to make one, so they do.
/End Quote
In Effect, Mr. Bush stated the same thing I have but in a much more understandable manner.
The problem with fixing laying workers, is that they are old bees. Adding frames of brood adds some younger bees to the hive, but you are taking resources and strength from your other hives to do this. IF, these bees are allowed to raise their own queen, the population will begin getting quite low by the time that queen starts laying, not to mention how low it will be by the time new bees start to emerge. Yes, it can be fixed at the cost of brood and bees / resources from other hives, but again, you are weakening those hives...
Would you be better off picking a weak hive and splitting it, and adding the new queen to it? Shake out the laying workers and put the hive with the new queen on the hive stand where the laying worker hive was....
Those bees strengthen the queen right hive.
As always, there are options, and this is only how I know works.
Scott