Finding that Elusive Queen.

[Neils]

Hearing the familiar cry of the new beekeeper at the moment "I can't find the queen!" :D

What are your sure fire methods for locating that queen you need to find but haven't spotted the last 2 times you went through the frames and started to look for her?

I'll start off easy, before I do anything else I stop looking closely at the bees and look for her movement. She moves differently to the workers and her back legs tend to catch my attention as she scurries, it is nearly always the movement of her legs that I spot first.

I also tend to concentrate my search, if I haven't done too much shaking of bees, to frames containing eggs.

[Jon]

Use little or no smoke so she will be where she wants to be, ie laying eggs somewhere
She wont usually be on a pollen frame.
She wont usually be on a frame of stores.
She wont usually be on a frame of sealed brood with nowhere to lay. (although she could possibly be passing through)

So realistically, there are about 4 or 5 frames out of the 11 in a national which she is likely to be on.
The most likely place to find her is a frame with a big patch of sealed brood where the centre part has started to hatch.
Queens are drawn to the laying space and you often find her laying right in the middle of the frame.
if I come across a frame like this I look at it much more carefully.

[Rosie]

If you watch a queeen in a obs hive you will see that she spends almost all her time wandering over open cells and looking into each one to see if it's ready for an egg. Every 10 minutes or so she will walk out from the open cell area and park herself on some capped honey on the edge of the nest. The others will feed and groom her there for a few minutes before she goes back to the open cells again.

Other clues are:

Combs near the queen generally have adhering bees that are much calmer than the ones distant from the queen
The queen smells. I can't smell her her but when I went through one of my apiaries with Roger Patterson he knew immediately when we lifted a frame with the queen on almost every time - just by the smell. If I had a better sense of smell that's a skill I would try to develop.

Rosie

[Jon]

Don't be fooled Steve. It's not the smell. He finds them lined up with ley lines.

[beeanne]

If I really have to find the queen, then I try and focus only on looking for the queen, and not get sidetracked by other stuff. I reckon if I focus on the queen only then everything else gets "tuned out" and I can then see her.

[Jon]

Funny, Megan Seymour said exactly the same thing with regard to looking for foulbrood. She never looks for the queen, queen cells or anything else, just focuses on the single task at hand. It is easy to get distracted.

[Ruary]

Funny, Megan Seymour said exactly the same thing with regard to looking for foulbrood. She never looks for the queen, queen cells or anything else, just focuses on the single task at hand. It is easy to get distracted.When she was showing how to find EFB at Gormanston, some one asked her about a queen cell which was on the comb. What queen cell she replied: she hadn't even noticed it as her concentration was on the brood cells.

[Neils]

I do similar but my general technique is to look for what is different to everything else i expect to see on this frame? but I also do that in "passes" so each time I'm only trying to do or look for one thing.

The queen moves differently to other bees, I find her legs very distinctive.

When it comes to the bees themselves, the majority are hopefully healthy workers so what looks different? Different colours, deformed wings, drones and hopefully queens all become easier to spot.

[beeanne]

http://youtu.be/IGQmdoK_ZfY

If you're not familiar with the infamous Harvard basketball "monkey business" experiment, then have a look at the video above. Did you notice anything odd?

There could be little green aliens in amongst the bees if I'm looking only for the queen (or only for anything else), am not sure I'd see them!

[Neils]

I've done that, and been completely amazed watching it again when the guy in the ape suit wanders across the screen.

[Adam]

Please read this

http://www.norfolkbee.co.uk/beekeepers-resource/finding-the-queen

And then tell me what you don't like about it!

[Neils]

Seems pretty good, one thing I would point out about donor frames is that I've seen hives that we know are queen less take several donor frames before they raise queen cells. In one case they never did and were eventually requeened from elsewhere.

[Julian]

A tip given by someone wiser than me was to look down either side of the frame as you lift it out. The Queen stands proud of the rest and can often be found this way.

[Adam]

Seems pretty good, one thing I would point out about donor frames is that I've seen hives that we know are queen less take several donor frames before they raise queen cells. In one case they never did and were eventually requeened from elsewhere. Were they DEFINITELY queenless or was there a duff queen in there that eventually got removed? You are probably correct. though.

I think beekeeping works on the 80% rule. In that a rule only applies about 80% of the time; For the 20%, well anything goes.

[Neils]

I think there are only so many times that a group of Beekeepers can go through a hive a continually miss the queen, but otherwise yes I'd agree.

Generally it works and generally bees are much better at sorting themselves out if given the means than we give them credit for. But you do occasionally get belligerent little buggers who just don't play ball. :)

I think my general point would be that I wouldn't necessarily take 1 frame not having queen cells on it as conclusive.