Frustrated and desperate

[conn4000]

Hi all
It's my first year beekeeping I'm not having a good week here's the story.i have a drone laying queen in one of my hives which I have 3 in total all nationals. I have tried to locate the queen to no avail over 3 weekends so made a decision to buy in a new queen which arrived today.
The plan was to make up a nuc from one of the other hives and introduce her there as per ged marshalls recommendations on his site, she is a buckfast.
My issue is again I cannot be sure if an unmarked queen is in the nuc.
Will the nuc I have made up today show emergency queen cell construction by tomorrow if its queenless?(hoping to introduce new queen to nuc tomorrow)
Please go easy on me I'm at that point where I've over read everything and cannot think straight
As I do not have a mentor near Ellesmere Port is their anyone that lives locally maybe that's available for help as the Mrs is going to kill me if I don't smile this week as I'm off work and spending more time with the bees than her
Feeling like a right lonely idiot here
Kind regards

 

[taurus]

Hi there chap - have you joined the local branch of the Cheshire beekeepers? There's a Wirral branch local to you.

I am no expert having only started last year - but sometimes when looking for queens two pairs of eyes work much better. The trick I was shown was to remove the frames without brood as the queen is unlikely to be on them (I still check though as I've bees often do what you least expect).

Then space out the remaining frames of brood with about an inch or more gap (depends how many frames you have in there). The idea is that the queen is hopefully now on one of those frames and she can't skip from frame to frame. It makes it easier to spot here as you can take your time.

I found it works for me and I've spotted several unmarked queens that way. I have to use it on one of my hives as the queen in there is quite good at hiding herself.

They don't need long to know they are queenless but what I was told when introducing a queen in a similar situation to yours is that if you put the queen in her cage in tomorrow if they accept her then even if they started on emergency queen cells they will pull them down again.

But if it's a drone laying queen they won't have any eggs to start a new queen with anyway.

 

[bjosephd]

Are the queens marked and easier to find in your other two hives? If so then maybe pick the stronger of the two to make up a nuc from. That might buy you more time to find the elusive drone layer in the other box and in the mean time get your new queen introduced, released, and laying.

 

[conn4000]

Cheers Taurus for the reply, I had tried what you suggested and nope no queen found, I even moved all frames into another brood box queen excluder on the bottom of this and looked into the empty box and around the sides then checked again when returning them.
I wouldn't mind but i found her on the supers the other week picked her up and let her go down to the brood box before adding an excluder as I was letting them draw the foundation in the supers for a few days as this box was a recently hived swarm from my own colony.
Guess I'll have a good look at the nuc tomorrow before introducing the queen, maybe a good nights sleep will do the trick.
And here's me thinking at this time of year I would be sitting there feet up, beer in hand watching them come and go with not a worry.
Guess it's all in the learning curve and I have not done too badly to date as my best hive on double brood is packed to the gills with honey, I nearly put my back out with the top brood box fully capped honey and they are working the supers like crazy.
I have caught and rehoused three swarms but these carniolans jeez they like to fly away.

 

[conn4000]

Hi bj thanks for the reply, no none of them are marked, bought a yellow pen today to get them marked up well this years new queens and the buckfast is marked already.
Never did get to the bottom of where my white marked queen went.
Bottom line is I'm not giving up lol

 

[Uncle Betty]

Another option -

Organise the frames in pairs, it'll need a second brood box.

Give them a little while.

Grab a pair at a time, opening them out like a book, in the hope that she's most likely to have been hiding out of the light.


I have also seen (YouTube, where else), and I hope I never have to do it...

...people shaking a whole colony frame by frame, into a big funnel which fits over an empty brood box which has a queen excluder.

Good luck.

 

[Quis Custodiet]

What U.B. has said above is good advice. If you pair the frames and watch them you will generally be able to tell which ones hide the queen. Another ploy is to move the hive well away from where it is located, all the flying bees will return there and you will have a much reduced number of bees to work through. Remember bees that have a queen will be much calmer than bees who find themselves queenless.

 

[Levitt53]

I sympathise as I can never find my queens which led me to having a bad week when they all tried to swarm. It's something I have got to get better at I know. My bees seem hopefully to have sorted themselves out some what this week so I am feeling better. Take a deep breath and persevere.

 

[garysbee]

make up the nuc shake off the bees off the frames before putting them in the nuc . place the nuc on original site and move the hive to far side of the garden this will split off the flying bees and make it a bit easier to find queen

 

[enrico]

I feel for you, it brings back so many memories of early years. cant really add to the good advice, just wish I was closer to help you out. It really does get a BIT easier, not much though
E

 

[madasafish]

I found a great way of finding queens is the following:

Ignore looking at bees heads and upper bodies.
Look at tails.
A queen's tail is unmistakeable - longer than a workers and much slimmer than a drone. In early days, I kept an image of a mermaid's tail..

Train your peripheral vision - the edges of your vision to look out for long tails.. that way you
can run your eyes over a frame and see a long tail out of the corner of an eye.

It works for me - but I have to add it took about 2-3 years to train my eyes and brain...

Imprint this on your brain..http://tinyurl.com/y7y8uboe

Edit : and the tail segments are longer as well..

 

[Show me the honey]

I found a great way of finding queens is the following:

Ignore looking at bees heads and upper bodies.
Look at tails.
A queen's tail is unmistakeable - longer than a workers and much slimmer than a drone. In early days, I kept an image of a mermaid's tail..

Train your peripheral vision - the edges of your vision to look out for long tails.. that way you
can run your eyes over a frame and see a long tail out of the corner of an eye.

It works for me - but I have to add it took about 2-3 years to train my eyes and brain...


Imprint this on your brain..http://tinyurl.com/y7y8uboe

Edit : and the tail segments are longer as well..

I'll give this a go not seen her in a year since I first got her

 

[drex]

I found a great way of finding queens is the following

Train your peripheral vision - the edges of your vision to look out for long tails.. that way you
can run your eyes over a frame and see a long tail out of the corner of an ..

This is exactly what I do. When I " look for the queen" I do not actually look for the queen. I look for something "different" - that can be shape or behaviour. Took me a few years to get my eye in too.

 

[george]

Not wishing to muddy the waters but , is it possible there is no queen in there at all and it's a laying worker ?
If you are convinced that whatever is laying is only giving you drone brood , put a spare brood box on the original site and walk the hive with the bees in as far as you can and shake them all off .
Even if she is still there it's unlikely she will find her way back .

 

[Eyeman]

Hi all
It's my first year beekeeping I'm not having a good week here's the story.i have a drone laying queen in one of my hives which I have 3 in total all nationals. I have tried to locate the queen to no avail over 3 weekends so made a decision to buy in a new queen which arrived today.
The plan was to make up a nuc from one of the other hives and introduce her there as per ged marshalls recommendations on his site, she is a buckfast.
My issue is again I cannot be sure if an unmarked queen is in the nuc.
Will the nuc I have made up today show emergency queen cell construction by tomorrow if its queenless?(hoping to introduce new queen to nuc tomorrow)
Please go easy on me I'm at that point where I've over read everything and cannot think straight
As I do not have a mentor near Ellesmere Port is their anyone that lives locally maybe that's available for help as the Mrs is going to kill me if I don't smile this week as I'm off work and spending more time with the bees than her
Feeling like a right lonely idiot here
Kind regards

Hi
Make up a nuc from one of your queen right colonies after first finding the queen. After a couple of hours introduce the new queen in the nuc- leave in closed cage for 2 days then check how bees are reacting before releasing her. This will give you time to sort out your DLQ colony.

 

[Nige.Coll]

Single egg in bottom of cell and good pattern ?
If so it's probably a DLQ.

If the hive has supers on and they are free from eggs it's going to be very unlikely any queen is up there so you could make a nuc from them.

As already said spare hive and shake the lot out on the floor and watch them. If a cluster forms the DLQ is probably in that. Let the rest of the bees go into new hive and maybe give them a frame of brood, if they make queen cells then great unite with the nuc you made or make a nuc from them and then unite. Get rid of the queen cells ofc.

You could try sieving them through a queen excluder but some DLQ's squeeze through the wire ones.
DLQ's are a swine to find sometimes.

 

[kevrhcfag]

Hi all
It's my first year beekeeping I'm not having a good week here's the story.i have a drone laying queen in one of my hives which I have 3 in total all nationals. I have tried to locate the queen to no avail over 3 weekends so made a decision to buy in a new queen which arrived today.
The plan was to make up a nuc from one of the other hives and introduce her there as per ged marshalls recommendations on his site, she is a buckfast.
My issue is again I cannot be sure if an unmarked queen is in the nuc.
Will the nuc I have made up today show emergency queen cell construction by tomorrow if its queenless?(hoping to introduce new queen to nuc tomorrow)
Please go easy on me I'm at that point where I've over read everything and cannot think straight
As I do not have a mentor near Ellesmere Port is their anyone that lives locally maybe that's available for help as the Mrs is going to kill me if I don't smile this week as I'm off work and spending more time with the bees than her
Feeling like a right lonely idiot here
Kind regards

Calm Blue Ocean.

If you getting really sullen I'm in Manchester happy to come along point and laugh at you and take the micky.

If get desperate happy to help just PM

 

[bjosephd]

I currently have a hive that appears to have no laying ANYTHING. All brood hatched, no eggs, no nothing, but behaving as if a queen. I want to combine it, bit if there is a little useless unmated queen in there I daren't risk losing my nice laying queen due to an internal battle for management !

 

[thenovice]

It is possible a reinvention of a wheel but this year I used a method I thought up after not finding the queen. It is very likely not very bee friendly but very effective.

take a new broodbox with empty frames/foundation. put QE over this. put a super or eke on top without frames. shake all frames into eke and use some smoke if they do not want to go down. queen will be among the drones on the QE.

 

[Poly Hive]

Two things to remember please.

No open brood does not in it's self denote a Q- hive. It does suggest that there is a queen in there of some sort most likely a virgin awaiting good weather, or she has mated and is taking the normal few days to start laying. So totally normal.

Laying workers are NOT that common. I think I have had one or two at the most since 1987 and running at least 20+ units per season. Unlikely that you have one.

PH