Finding Queen Bees

Last Updated on Friday, 29 August 2008 15:09

Finding Queens

One statement, often heard from a beginner is "I've never seen my queen".The queens are in the colonies, its just they are not easy to spot. Unfortunately, it takes experience and a method to reliably find a queen.

• Marking queens makes a big difference, they are easier to distinguish.
• Colonies do supercede, and so its more than possible to find more than one.
• Use minimal smoke, to minimise disturbance
• If you harvest drone as part of IPM, queens do seem to like these frames
• Expect her with the brood. She's less (but not impossible) to be on outside frames with lots of stores.

Its impossible to learn from websites, but the more you have seen, the more likely you are to find her, so....to help you along, heres a few pictures of queen bees (mostly marked but do spend some time studying how different she looks to the other bees)