Finding the Queen
Do you really need to find the queen?
Perhaps you plan to perform a Pagden Artificial Swarm, so finding the queen is urgent. It need not be a crisis if she is elusive. First, try the techniques below, but if you are short of time, use a different manipulation technique, such as a Modified Snelbrove 2. It’s a cinch.
Most of the time, on a routine inspection, the essential things are finding eggs and the absence of queen cells. If you can’t see eggs, very young brood is usually sufficient.
It’s nice to see the queen, but rarely necessary.
Many people mark their queens (Q) in the spring, and doing so makes a lot of sense. Besides making Qs easier to find, marking lets you know when a Q has superseded. Marking involves putting a dab of paint on her thorax. At first, marking a Q is exciting and satisfying. It’s exciting because it’s risky.
Even with the help of an experienced beekeeper, my marking has gone horribly wrong. I’ve crushed one and covered another with ink. Perhaps some experienced beekeepers with steady hands have never killed or lost a queen. I doubt it. In 2024, I did not mark my queens and did not regret it, except I did not know the age of my queens at the start of 2025. However, when you start beekeeping and are not too good at spotting queens, don’t let me turn you off, most beekeepers mark them.
Queen Appearance
Queen appearance: considering her size, it is impressive that the Q can lay so many eggs. A good queen reared in the Punjab weighs 209 mg, and a bee egg weighs around 0.21 mg. If a queen lays 2000 eggs daily in early summer, the total weight of the eggs laid is 426 mg, twice her body weight. So, she is fed constantly. No wonder she is big, 19 mm long. Workers who are 12 mm long. Drones have such wide bodies that they can be a constant distraction. So consider chanting “ignore drones” when looking for the queen.
The Q’s distinguishing features apart from her size are a dark, domed thorax not covered by many hairs and a long abdomen that protrudes beyond her wings. She walks a bit differently, less scatty than workers, but maybe faster if frightened. She does not join bees feasting on nectar after you smoke the hive. Her colouration may differ from that of her workers; in the UK, it ranges from jet black to pleasant honey/yellow. You will occasionally find her surrounded by her attendants, but more often, she is stationary or ambling along. Young flighty queens run fast and will travel to the other side of the box or the floor within a few seconds.
Position in the hive The queen is most likely in the brood nest on a frame containing eggs, commonly on brood comb, usually on drawn comb. She is rarely on a frame where nectar is being cured. It is strange, but queens in Paradise hives occasionally go walkabout. So, she may be found alone on the second frame from the wall, far away from the brood nest.
Polished cells are a promising sign that a queen is present.
If the centres of the brood frames contain nectar, this is a bad omen.
Queen finding techniques
Use the least smoke possible.
Stop before the bees get cold. Cold bees form little huddles and are reluctant to move.
Use the back of your hand to break up huddles. They may be hiding the queen.
Narrow your search. Assuming the colony is on two brood boxes, and the brood is in both, separate the boxes for 20 minutes. Then, see if the bees in one box are missing their queen, scurrying around looking for her. This only works well if the hive is not congested.
Move the hive at least several metres away, and put a nuc or hive containing some brood and a drawn frame in the home position. The foragers fly home, and you will have fewer bees to look through. I’ve done it once, and that was enough.
Use the open-book technique. Split the frames into pairs so that with one brood box, there are 2–3 pairs per box. Thus, there is space between each pair. Leave the hive boxes alone for a short while. The queen will shelter from the sun, so when you open each pair like a book, hey presto, you see the queen. If the hive has two brood boxes, spreading the brood between four boxes is barmy. I can’t look at two frames simultaneously, so It has never worked for me. Some people swear by this method. It would work better if you look for queenless movement behaviour.
Sieve the bees. This is the option of last resort. It involves smoking the bees through a QE. I’ve done it a few times and always regret doing so. The first time, they zipped up the walls of the funnel box and hung around on the outside. I wrestled with another colony, and they became grumpy for the rest of the season. If you must do it, shake the bees off their frames into an empty box and smoke them through a QE into a box beneath. You may end up with drone soup and the queen coasting around the edges of the box, where she is difficult to pick up. Think again if you expect them to go from one empty box into another. Since they have no compunction to go through the QE, they may be oblivious to smoke. Swishing them with a brush makes them make unhappy.
Split. If you aren’t in a rush and are good at seeing eggs, limit your search by putting a QE between the brood boxes. Inspect four days later and see which box contains eggs.
If you fail, try, try, try again.
Can you find the queen?
Smashing little creatures, aren’t they!
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