The first effort at combining the laying worker colony with another queen-right weak colony was not successful. Jim and John discuss what to do next and decide to combine the dysfunctional colony with a strong queen-right nucleus colony. This procedure was successful.
Next Lesson: A Quick View of a Propolis Forager
Questions:
- Is it always successful when you combine two colonies?
- Is the newspaper method of combining colonies successful because it gradually joins the two colonies?
- Is it possible to locate a laying worker?
2 comments
Carol Ventura
04/11/2013 at 9:37 AM (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Don’t you have to find and kill the laying worker and the queen from the bottom box so that they don’t kill the new introduced queen?
Tim Arheit
07/29/2014 at 8:44 PM (UTC -5) Link to this comment
When you have a laying worker, it’s a sign that you haven’t had a queen for some time so there is no need to search for the queen. As far as finding the laying worker, it’s likely that there are more than one and they would be virtually impossible to find because there is visually no difference between a laying worker and one that isn’t. In fact a laying worker will continue doing other activities in the hive including foraging.