queenless-laying workers

[beesonhay465]

my plan is to take some frames of brood and eggs with bees and a new queen. after taking all frames from hive with bees to a location a few hundred feet away . installing these few frames with queen in empty hive . if the queen is accepted in a couple of hours then to shake all bees and return frames to hive. hoping that the laying workers will not know how to get back and the queen will be accepted and defended by the introduced bees . this hive has lots of honey and was a large swarm captured in late march and was booming til they  were not. new marked queen is $40. the weather is too hot near 100f for me to work them. please give me some opinion on this plan.

[Robo]

I would suggest either making or buying a queen introduction frame, it is the only method I have found that reliably works on laying worker hives.    Here is an old post, but it has a few links of people in the same situation having success with it.

https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=39947.msg338237#msg338237

[iddee]

""if the queen is accepted in a couple of hours ""

The queen WILL NOT be accepted in a couple of hours. Maybe in 5 to 8 days, but not hours.

[beesonhay465]

after going through the entire hive yesterday and finding no brood no eggs packed with honey and very quiet hive . consulted the local expert, he says there is probably a queen and the hive is honey bound and to checkerboard some empty frames into the brood box.  i think i will try that.

[beesonhay465]

update . been trying to sell the hives . one looker was of the opinion that they had raised a new  queen and she had returned and they were throwing out the drones and i should give them some time to get sorted. another person said they were probably honey bound and i should give them some empty frames.I did both. checked the hive yesterday , prepared to go through every frame and see if i could tell what was happening. found a real nice pattern of brood on a new frame. put the supers back on and called it good.