Queen Marking by Crown of thorns

[Arfermo]

I was at a demo for an audience of circa 20 by a very old hand at beekeeping (70 odd years or more, 6 out apiaries, min 8 hives in each, etc), breeding queens, attending Apimondia, etc. His first demo was finding a queen in a very busy hive. He put two empty B/Bs on slabs on the ground, lifted frames one by one out of the main box and shook the bees from each frame into one of the empty B/Bs, placed the beeless frames into the other empty one. Working progressively through the colony, he eventually found the queen, marked her using a crown of thorns and then put her in a queen cage with fondant laced with honey where the exit is when the been have eaten it. He uses his own marker type ink for refilling a marker pen with and it remains for life without re-marking (saves £7 on a new proprietary marker pen - just pulls the felt tip out and then shoves it back after). The purpose of putting the queen in the cage is to stop the queen being balled - as happened to one of mine a month ago. As a matter of interest he usually clips the wings too.

This method his ensures certainty of finding the queen without trawling through the frames more than once.

Somebody will no doubt offer a snotty jejoinder. Don't waste peoples time!!!

 

[wondervet]

Arfer,

Am I being dim? Why shake the bees off into another box rather than just inspect each frame and then transfer to spare BB?

Roger