[music]
So we've found the queen on this frame, so what we are
going to do is mark her and clip her,
just put my finger underneath there to
keep her from going through, there she's coming back.
First of all we need to talk a little bit about how to
pick up the queen.
So what I like to do to pick up the queen is approach
her from behind, get my fingers right down to
the comb and then gently squeeze on her thorax,
not on her abdomen at all, her abdomen is very tender
so we can't squeeze on her abdomen, but we can
squeeze on the thorax and then we just lean the frame
out of the way and we transfer her to our other hand.
We can transfer the queen back and forth
handling her by the thorax.
I want to position the queen
in between my fingers and I'm just wiping my fingers
off to get some wax and propolis and honey off,
then I'll wipe my other fingers off there, and we positioned
her nice and high in between my index and thumb.
We use a latex or water based paint pen and just brace my
hands together and draw a nice blue dot on her there.
There is a colour code for marking queens, this is
last year's queen so it's 2015 queen and that year
was blue.
Now we use a pair of blunt tipped scissors and we,
just going to re-position her a little bit there,
we want to clip the left wing on an odd year
and the right wing on an even year.
So again my arms are braced on my legs
and I just lift up that left wing and we cut right
where the inside margin of the wing changes angle,
there is an angle there and we cut right at that
angle and just make sure that there are no feet or
legs sticking in the way and then snip that off.
So now she is marked and clipped and we'll put her
into a cage and we'll let that paint dry for
for a few moments.
It's already looking pretty dry cause it's
a nice warm day here, but we'll put her in here
to let that paint dry a bit and we just lay the
queen on top of the frames until we put
the frame back in and we are all ready
to release her.
We get this frame into position first just so
there's no opportunity that she could possibly
be crushed with the frames being moved
around and then we'll pick up that cage and we will
release the queen.
If there are bees on the surface we just gently
brush them away.
We don't rub because the queen's feet can be
sticking out through these holes and we could
sheer them off if we are rubbing the bees off,
but I'd like to get most of the bees off the cage
so that when we go to release her we can just
focus on her.
We just pop that cage open and hold the lid back
so the lid can't interfere.
Then we shake her into our
hand like so and then it is easy to watch her go
down in between the frames when we release her.
So we can either just put her in or shake her off
our hand like so and watch her go down in between
the frames, so now we know she is nice and safe
and she is marked so she will be easier to find
next year.
That clipping helps to prevent her from swarming,
but it is also a backup for the paint marking;
if the paint happens to come off we know that
if it is a clipped queen that it is still the same queen.
So that's how we handle queens,
cage them, mark them and clip them and then again
release the queens when we are finished.
It's really handy to have marked queens because
it makes it so much easier to find them when
we are looking for them.