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.