queen is laying outside hive

[Diane]

I need advice: My queen somehow got outside the hive and is laying eggs underneath the hive! I have capped brood, but no eggs or prepupae inside the hive. (I do have hatched supersedure cells inside). I have a cluster of bees building new comb underneath my hive, which is about 8" off the ground. There is definitely uncapped prepupae there.
How do I get the queen back in?

[BjornBee]

Happened to me last year also. I think a new queen went on a mating flight, and upon coming back to the hive she went under the bottom board which allows a gap. I had a screen bottom board and that probably added to the situation. Once under she was against the screen and it seemed many bees joined her under the hive. They had an area of about three feet filled in with comb, brood and honey. The hive was sitting on a pallet and they defended it very well for all the open area. I just open the hive up and ripped the screen out and reassembled. Then they naturally came back up through the hive and I replaced the bottom after that all occurred.

If you do not have screen bottom board installed, I would put an empty box on another bottom, lift the comb and existing bottom and place onto the box. Or ripp out the comb and place into a box and put the regular comb boxes on top. They will eventually work themselves into the normal boxes. Not knowing how much comb and your equipment setup makes it hard for solid advice. But common sense and taking advantage of what bees naturally do is most likely the key. Have fun and do not hesitate to try something. Bees are very forgiving.

[Robert Brenchley]

I found the queen under one of my hives last week, with a large cluster. Unfortunately I'd had an exhausting day in school, wasn't thinking straight, assumed it was a swarm and combined it with a queenless split instead of checking what I had, and leaving the split with the cell I'd put in the day before. I'm pretty sure the queen had dropped off a frame while I was examinging the hive on the previous day, tried to get back in, and ended up under the mesh floor, where she then attracted a lot of the flying bees.

[Michael Bush]

If you can't catch a queen with your fingers (practice on drones, you'll find it's not that hard) then you can use a queen catcher. They are available from Betterbee, Brushy Mt etc.

I make a "tent" with my finger and thumb and aim for the thorax and pin the queen (drones for practice of course) to the comb and then grasp her on each side of the thorax. I suppose, if the comb is large, you can cut the piece of comb she is on loose and just transfer the comb to the hive and let her run off of it or shake her off of it.

[honeyman46408]

"I think a new queen went on a mating flight, and upon coming back to the hive she went under the bottom board which allows a gap. I had a screen bottom board and that probably added to the situation. Once under she was against the screen and it seemed many bees joined her under the hive."

A little off subject;

I had a swarm try to go in a hive with a SBB and it confussed them trying to get in from under the hive, after replaceing it with a solid BB they marched in, I guess if we look hard enough we can find bad things about anything ;)

[HarryVanderpool]

Even further off the subject...
I was looking through a hive a few weeks ago that appeared to be queenless, when all of a sudden the hive next to it issued a huge swarm.
They hovered in the air for a bit and then landed on the hive THAT I WAS INSPECTING!
They stayed put, even though there were probably 10000 bees left in the queenless hive.
It's a never ending amazement what the bees will do to hold our interest!

:cool: