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ocba - [ocba] laying workers - Please check my logic before I jump!

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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Hamsiba Family <hamsibas AT gmail.com>
  • To: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] laying workers - Please check my logic before I jump!
  • Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2015 16:38:19 -0400

We have: 
- a previously strong hive, now queenless with laying workers: lots of drone brood, no worker brood.  Two deeps of drone brood, necter and pollen, little capped honey.
- a strong queenright hive, lots of open brood.  One deep of brood and pollen and a medium of honey and nectar.
- a post-flow nuc with a couple of nice queen cells, just closed up this week.

What is the easiest way to proceed? My first thought would be -

- Newspaper combine a consolidated box of the laying worker hive on top of the strong queenright hive's deep + medium.

- after pulling some of the most prolific frames of drone brood for freezing and later cleanup in the combined hive.  

The other wrinkle was to first do a couple of weeks with a double screenboard between the two hives, then switch to newspaper to combine.  Would this have a better chance of success or just give the laying workers more time to repopulate with more drone brood after I remove frames?

If there were more hives here, I could try just shaking them out and letting them divide themselves between several hives, but we only have one hive and a nuc  to work with besides the laying worker colony.

I don't really want to use open brood frames from my one strong colony to try to convert the laying worker hive over weeks this time around.

If this all worked, I can divide down with or without using the nuc later if needed.

Any better ideas?  Have I missed something?

Cheers,

Brad Kosiba



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