Laying workers is caused by absence of laying queen and open brood (larvae) for a long while. The condition is the bees last ditch effort to continue their genetic line. By the time there are LW, the average age of the bees is also getting quite old.
When enough LW bees have developed, and there can be hundreds of them, the hive believes it is queenrite. LW hives kill queens! This includes giving them brood to make a queen or giving them a ripe queen cell. I have rarely seen the LW raise their own queen from brood given. They do initially accept the new virgin from a ripe cell given. She will come back mated, start to lay, and shortly thereafter they kill her too. In my experience, attempts at re-queening a LW hive are just exercises in futility. Some folks have had success. For me, I am way past the experimentations, permutations, and combinations of manipulations. The time and effort are just too high against the dismal chance of success. It is a condition fraught with disappointment and frustration.
Do not despair when you find it. All is not lost. I do recommend either of these two options to deal with LW hive that take minimal effort and get positive results:
1 - (Preferred), combine then separate. Newspaper combine the LW beebox on top of a strong hive. The strong hive will detect, seek, and destroy the LW bees in short order. The pile of dead bees out front 2 days later are all the laying workers that have been ousted. After a week or two, go do a split and introduce a mated queen or a very ripe queen cell.
2 - If there are few bees, small colony, just completely remove the hive from its location and shake it out. Dismantle the hive and shake out all the bees. Put the equipment into temporary storage or use it on your other hives. The bees shook out will initially go to where the hive was. Bee-wildered they will circle and ultimately will go beg their way into the other hives. Yes, this includes the LW bees, they do fly around just fine like all the others. The other hives will get them all sorted out. After a week or two go find the strongest hive, do a split and introduce a new queen or very ripe queen cell.
Long story short: Once you see laying workers, please do not waste your time and efforts trying to queen them. Use up the resources and the bees elsewhere. Use the organized bees of other queenrite hives to sort out the rogue laying workers. Come back and rebuild a hive later (splits/nucs).
If you want to try other methods, go for it. Just sayin; -been there done that- ; and hope this info saves you from going down that path.
Hope that helps!
