help!?! Queen flew the coop!

[mmarmino]

Ok Ive heard it happening before but now it happened to me. I bought a queen to requeen a queenless hive and today, after three days I was going to release her. I had her about 50 feet or so from the hive to mark and clip her when she flew off..:o. So now I dont know what to do, will she come back.. maybe. or is she long gone?

[Sundance]

The procedure is to stand exactly where you were and
wait for quite a long spell. She may very well return and
land on you.

That far from the colonies, I am afraid she's a goner. But
maybe others have had luck with queens finding a colony.

[mmarmino]

well crap i went back out there to look around to no avail, so then i went back over beside the hive to check the queen cage i had laying there and got popped on the ear!:pinch:

[Sundance]

Keep your eye open and look for small clusters of bees
that may surround your lost queen. As small as a golf
ball or bigger. Sometimes, they will find her.

[Dr.Wax]

Similar thing happened to me before and I found the queen the following day in a small cluster on the ground in front of the hive.

[mmarmino]

Ill be keeping a look-out for the next couple days.

[wcubed]

This characteristic is not unique to queens. Almost any bee released in an unfamiar area returns to the place they first saw light of day. They may fly around quite a bit, but they remember where they started.

Was saving this tidbit in case I ever got around to writing about honey house design, but that doesn't seem likely at this time. Applied this beehavior in my honey house. An openable window was boarded over and and an escape cone trap installed. (It's almost impossible to get supers into the honey house with zero bees) A small colony was installed on a platform outside the window that could use some help with added bee power. Before harvest started. As supers came in, with the lights turned off, bees would migrate to the light of the screen trap and join the light colony outside. Solved several problems of honey house ops with a simple solution.

Walt

[mmarmino]

what?

[Bizzybee]

For future reference, get the queen released and established, first priority. Catch her any time after that for marking or clipping. If she takes off on you then, she will find her way back.

As for now, look for something like sundance mentioned. Here's a queen I found a few years ago after 3 days. Different set of circumstances but same result. You can make out a faint yellow dot in the center of the bee cluster on the ground.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3333/3556426700_0ef45a533f_o.jpg