Laurence Edwards rescues a failing colony with a drone-laying queen by removing her and installing a replacement without waiting for cage removal. After four weeks, the colony rebounds with a large worker population and far fewer drones, showing a queen swap can fix the problem fast.
So if you remember back to this colony here, we went in, hardly any bees, drone comb on every single frame, found the queen, she was rubbish, she was a dud. We squished her, killed her straight away, and then we added in a new mated queen. We didn't have to wait any time before popping the cages because the pheromone on a drone-laying queen is basically nonexistent. Killed the queen, added in a new one, left it for 4 weeks, and today I'm gonna show you the results. So the first thing that you'll notice is lots and lots of bees, and also even better than that, not too many drones. This colony here is fixed already. So, so easy to fix a drone-laying queen at that point in the year. Just pop in an early mated queen and it will fix your colony and save them from a guaranteed
