Beekeeping

I've not dealt with this personally, so take this with a grain of salt. If you're sure it's a laying worker, which you can usually tell based on where in the cell eggs are being laid (I can elaborate if you'd like me to), then I know in general requeening can be hit or miss. The hives can be combined like you say with relative success I believe using the newspaper method, which lets the queens pheromones travel to the queenless hive slowly. I'm not sure if it's a matter of the pheromones then doing their job to resuppress the workers drive to lay or it's just a matter of the combination outliving the laying workers themselves, but ~~Fred Dunn at least recommended that method in one of his videos.~~ I'm trying to find that one, but failing at the moment... If I do find it I'll update with a link.

Edit: I found the video I was thinking about and the newspaper method was a separate discussion from the laying worker part. Episode 211 from a few weeks ago, for what it's worth.