Spotting Queens.

[Millet]

I consider myself half ok at spotting them which has had me concerned over the past three weeks as there has been no sign of her or eggs in the brood box..with no Queen cells and no Queen I had the colony wrote of last week and a did plan on uniting the brood box to another colony and spreading the supers around..
Today I was going through the supers as I have a day of extracting to free a few supers..on getting through three supers of five what did I see..? ..I will tell you what I seen..a big ball of worker brood in the last two supers above the Queen excluder..she is not a small Queen that could fit through the excluder and I am fairly careful to check the excluder before I place it on the ground near the entrance..however i must have missed her on this occasion and put the excluder back on the brood box with the Queen on the wrong side..
Lesson learned and i will double check in future..my only dilemma now is finding the Queen in four supers jam packed with bees..

Do any of you sensible good folk out there have a quick easy method of getting her back down below..
Cheers.
Steve.
..
.

 

[Beefriendly]

Shake/brush all the bees from the supers into the brood boxes.

 

[madasafish]

Shake/brush all the bees from the supers into the brood boxes.

or place excluders under each super, wait a week and then insspect for eggs...
I am sure Sherlock did that when keeping bees in retirement...

 

[Millet]

Shake/brush all the bees from the supers into the brood boxes.

I'll do that tomorrow but before I do I will have to add a temporary brood box as they are on a single brood and all the bees will not fit into one..

 

[Clemcook]

I have given up trying to find the Queen's now unless they are big and fat I always miss them!

I've developed a method to be completely in tune with my colonies I can what's occurring generally by the behaviour

 

[Millet]

Before I shook all the supers out I decided to look through each box separately first one no joy..second one no joy..third one...Bingo the little darling was on the middle frame which was full of eggs and young brood...she is now back in the brood box with a new excluder on just to be on the safe side..

 

[mike99]

Well done Steve.

 

[Millet]

Well done Steve.

 

[Poly Hive]

Add a 2nd BB now possibly?

PH

 

[Millet]

Add a 2nd BB now possibly?

PH

I already have PH.. ..I put another box below just incase i had to shake all the supers out..if i did have to shake them the single box would not have taken the amount of bees..luckily i spotted her before it came to that..i will leave the extra box where it is for now.

 

[Millet]

More weired goings on but that is bees for you i suppose..
I was taking supers of yesterday and it was this colonies turn..there was no more brood in the supers but when I got to the Queen excluder I heard piping and a group of around ten bees clustered on the QE not moving..I moved them out of the way and lone behold a unclipped virgin appeared before me..I caught her up and put her to one side and hunted for the 2018 clipped Queen which I found below the excluder..there was very little brood and no Queen cells so the only thing I could think of doing was dispatching the virgin with it being this late in the year..
This colony was on double brood and five supers but not jam packed like the other big colony..could it have been lack of bees to spread pheromone in the supers that made the bees make a new Queen.? .