How to find the Queen

[Artisan]

Hi,
Found a handful of queen cells in one of my colonies on an inspection
at my out apiary this afternoon.
14x12 BB and a full uncapped super.
Last inspection 7 days ago.
Didn't appear that they had already swarmed. Loads of bees in BB & super.

Thought I was a clever clogs because I had a Nuc Box in the back of the car
for just this situation. Went through the BBox but couldn't find the Queen to do
an AS.
Persevered but no luck.
Knocked down all Q Cells apart from a nice open one and closed up.

Will go back in the morning for another go, but any hints or tips for finding
a Queen gratefully received!

Peter

 

[MandF]

There is the trick of pushing 2 frames together with gaps either side. It is called something like "bookmarking"? The idea is the queen will move in the middle of the 2 frames to avoid the light, then you look at both at the same time (open up like a book).

 

[jimbeekeeper]

If your out apiary is well away from people you can do the following.

Remove super and put to one side.

Place new brood box in original location with foundation in.

Remove ALL bees off frames onto foundation section.

Place QX on top, then place brood box with brood/eggs etc in (but NO bees) on top of QX.

The place another QX on top of this, then finally super on top.

You now have all the bees and the queen on foundation.

In about 24-48 hours all the nurse bees will be back on the brood.

Remove this section and site at least 3ft away, split as you want to make more nucs.

But quite late for getting a good mated quen, are you sure they are swarm cells?

 

[Swarm]

Better to play safe and assume they are and perform AS, even if only to reunite later. I heard of a swarm picked up this morning ....

 

[Artisan]

As I remember it, knocked down about three or four sealed cells that were across the bottom of two frames.
A couple of open cells that had larva & jelly again on the bottom of frames.
And a couple of sealed cells about a third of the way up the frames.

I left a large open cell with larva & jelly in the middle of one frame.

 

[Artisan]

Thank you jimbeekeeper.

Unfortunately I forgot to mention that I am out of spare BB's at the moment.
Have been increasing colony numbers (mostly by accident!)
Only have the Nuc box to play with at the moment