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Finding the queen

3K views 10 replies 11 participants last post by  millerdrr 
#1 ·
I have been through my hives several times now and I have yet to see the queen. For a general inspection if I see eggs I am fine. Lately I have been making some queens. I would rather take a frame from a hive where I knew where the queen is located. I have been grabbing a frame and trying to look for the queen to be sure I am not moving her. As I am not good at finding the queen, verifying she is not on the frame seems a little prone to failure.

How does everybody else find the queen in a hive that has several boxes. Do you look for a big bee? My hives are loaded with drones. Is she usually found near the eggs?
 
#2 ·
I'm really new, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I found that simply looking at pictures of queens helped me tremendously. I look for a longer bee. I also watch the other bees to see how they act. If they're near the queen, they simply quit what they're doing and focus on her. My queen is marked and that helps as well. I just googled queen bee pictures and studied them. To me, a drone is a bit harder to spot because the size isn't that much different, but the queen will be twice as big as the workers.
My 8 year old boy can spot her without even trying....I don't know why. He's handy to have around when I'm doing inspections and such and he likes fooling with them.


GH

GH
 
#3 ·
> As I am not good at finding the queen, verifying she is not on the frame seems a little prone to failure.

You don't really need to find the queen, you simply need to know that she is not on the frames you are removing. You can select the frames, brush all the bees off those frames, then put those frames in a new box, above a queen excluder, but on the original hive. Come back in an hour or so, and you will have brood frames with nurse bees, and be confident the queen is not on those frames. :D
 
#4 ·
Patience!

if the queen is out and about she is fairly easily spotted becasue she is much longer than a worker bee. she also has a thorax that is a bit bigger and is noticible. On two of my hives, i was able to easily find and locate the queens, but decided to make them anyways. The third hive, i missed the queen one four separate inspections and didn;t see her until ther 5th. when she is in a cell measuring it, nothing but her royal bee butt is sticking out and she is easily overlooked. then shes pull out, turns 180deg and lays an egg. when she is in that cell measuring, she would be very easy to overlook.
 
#5 ·
I have a queen that every time I inspect the frame she is on she jumps off and stays on the bottom of the hive. Found this out the hard way couple months ago when she jumped off a breeze blew her onto the ground. I think I freaked out more than she did. I just scooped her up and placed her back into the hive. She was o.k. I need couch time now.
 
#10 ·
With more than one hive, here's a trick you can try. Pull a frame of younger open larva from a hive and shake the bees off it. Insert it into the hive you are looking for the queen in and come back 5 to 10 minutes later and pull that frame out and inspect. Most of the time, the queen will be on it. She will be inspecting that strange smelling larva frame and spreading her pheromones on it to claim it as her own. Works most of the time, give it a try and see if it helps for you.
 
#11 ·
Once you see her a few times, it gets easier. I never saw a queen for the first couple of years, but now I see her all the time. I was looking at a frame in my hands a few days ago and saw the queen cross over the top of a frame still in the box, when I wasn't really concentrating in her direction.

Color stands out more for me than the bigger body. All of the queens in our hives have solid reddish brown bodies, and it really stands out against the black stripes of the workers.
 
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