Hi!

Looks like your pseudocode will work as a workaround instead of monkey-patching!

Still the my suggestion to add the line to code stays.
self._count should be always equal to the length of self._work_queue? If yes, why duplication. If no - which one to use, why duplication? Also there is an additional lock.

http://docs.python.org/3.3/library/queue.html#queue.Queue.task_done - there is a special method, why not using it?

Looks like you think that `work_queue.task_done()` should not be added. I don't understand why, but you decide what's better for Python.

Thank you for your time!
Victor