Well if no body has tried this, I guessing it's a really bad idea...
Using a queen excluder and beequick to find a queen.
I always have trouble finding unmarked queens. In the case of re-queening, finding the queen is a must. Most of my hives are deeps on the bottom, med for the second brood chamber. No excluder so she could be in a super but not very likely and I can search them by hand. Anyway, I was thinking about putting an excluder between the two brood chambers and using beequick on the bottom board to force most of the bees out of the deep, then look for the queen. If she's not in the bottom deep, reverse the process and check the medium for her. I searched and only saw one thread on this subject and it wasn't very big, so I thought I'd ask and see how many people have done this and what they think about it. I've got 5 queens coming next week and I know I'm going to struggle finding some of the queens. I think 2 of the hives are queenless but I thought that early this year and stumbled into her while re-queening. She was an old marked queen but most of the mark had come off, and she was NOT laying....
Thanks for the help,
Robbin
Thanks for the help,
Robbin
1 - 4 of 4 Posts
Michael Bush's version; http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrequeeninghot.htm
Usually spoken of as a shakeout of all frames with an empty body below an excluder with the brood put back above the excluder.
The less dramatic way is to just put an excluder in the middle until all eggs have hatched. Cuts down the question by 50 % without much effort at all. You can just introduce the queens into the half without eggs and later combine hives as you find the queens at your leisure.
Usually spoken of as a shakeout of all frames with an empty body below an excluder with the brood put back above the excluder.
The less dramatic way is to just put an excluder in the middle until all eggs have hatched. Cuts down the question by 50 % without much effort at all. You can just introduce the queens into the half without eggs and later combine hives as you find the queens at your leisure.
Here's a link to a recent thread on finding the queen. Sorry, if you have already seen it.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?295777-How-to-find-an-unmarked-Queen
There's also the shaker box. Remove the medium(trust there is some brood frames in it) and place a queen excluder on top of it. Add an empty deep super above it and run a couple of strips of duct tape around the interior at the top. Shake bees off of frames from bottom deep into "shaker box". Worker bees will move down through the queen excluder and the queen is left behind above the excluder.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?295777-How-to-find-an-unmarked-Queen
There's also the shaker box. Remove the medium(trust there is some brood frames in it) and place a queen excluder on top of it. Add an empty deep super above it and run a couple of strips of duct tape around the interior at the top. Shake bees off of frames from bottom deep into "shaker box". Worker bees will move down through the queen excluder and the queen is left behind above the excluder.
1 - 4 of 4 Posts
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