[music]
Hi there.
So in this video we are going to talk about finding queens.
It can be a challenging thing to do.
Many beekeepers dread having to look for the queen
but it can be fun too, it's kind of like going
fishing or hunting there's the thrill of the chase
and so it is an activity I quite enjoy.
There are lots of little tricks that you can use
to help find the queen and you need to use all
of them, and really the biggest thing is
keeping your focus, not being distracted so that
you are only trying to find the queen,
not trying to do anything else.
When you start to find the queen you apply a little
bit of smoke, but you don't want to apply much
smoke because that gets the bees running around,
which makes it very difficult to find the queen.
The bees are running around she is running around
and you want to try to find her where
she normally would be laying eggs on a frame
and in a normal position within the colony.
So just a little bit of smoke there.
It's always easier to find queens in a smaller
colony like this one, so if you want to practice
at getting better at finding queens do so
in the spring when the colonies aren't very
strong and it is a little easier to find them.
Ideally you have a nice sunny day like today
when you are finding queens, it just makes
it a lot easier to see the queen.
So we'll take the first frame out
and what we are doing is we are looking at
this side of the frame and we are scanning across
the frame and around the edges and we are looking
for the queen's abdomen.
I usually recommend to people that they look at
a picture of a queen and really focus on the
difference between her and the worker bees,
and it is her abdomen that is most noticeably
different, and that is what you are looking for
is a queen abdomen as you are scanning
across the frame.
You don't look at every individual bee,
you don't have to because she is enough different
that that abdomen will kind of jump out at you.
So we scan across the frame, turn it to the other side,
scan across that and then lean it out of the way
as per usual.
And we won't look at this frame because there's
hardly any bees on there and not much chance
she'll be there, so we'll just pry
the next frame loose.
Now as we are taking this frame out,
we look at the following frame, the one that is in
here because very often we'll see the queen
moving down the frame.
Queens always move away from the light, a mated
queen will always move away from the light,
so about fifty percent of the queens I find I will see
them as they are moving down the next frame.
Then we look at this side of the frame because it
was in the dark, so the queen is more likely to be on this
side than on this side.
You'll see what I mean when I repeat that process on the
next frame.
So again we are scanning across the frame
across the frame
looking at the edges.
If a queen happens to be near an edge on a frame
she'll move around to the dark side of the frame
and then you turn the frame over and she moves back to
the dark side, so you easily miss the queen when she
was near an edge.
So again we'll look at the next frame
then we'll look at this side of the frame
because it was in the dark position.
So we are looking at this side of the frame
scanning across.
Now just very briefly I am going to change
my focus I am going to look for eggs.
I see lots of eggs, so I know for sure
there will be a queen, now I forget all about eggs
and just focus on looking for an abdomen.
This is a colony with a spotty brood pattern
and we want to requeen this colony, so that is
why we are trying to find the queen.
So I don't see her there.
Doesn't take too long especially if the hive isn't
too strong.
So you'd want to move along fairly briskly
because if it takes you a long time then the
queen can start wandering around
and end up on the box or on the honey frames
or so on.
So I am looking at that next frame.
Now I am looking at this side of the frame scanning,
doing the edges first
and then the middle.
Don't see her there.
Keep moving through the hive methodically
one frame at a time,
and she'll show up eventually.
Looking at the next frame.
Don't see her.
Looking at the dark side of this frame.
Not there.
Brood pattern looks a little bit better here.
Nope.
If your eyes stop on a drone, that's good you
are noticing something different.
So there's a number of frames that she could
be on here lots of frames, oh I see her on
the next frame.
So we'll just quickly lean that frame over there
and pull this one up
and
there she is right there.
So you see we did find her on the frame
not in our hands, but the one that was
still in the box and you always try to get
just a little bit ahead of the queen.
What I am going to show you now is how to cage
the queen to keep her safe while you are
doing hive manipulations.
Some people prefer to leave the queen on the frame
and handle the frame as we showed you
in "Working with Bees" that video "Working with Bees."
In this case we are going to actually pick up the
queen and cage her.
So what we do is make sure our hands are nice
and clean, not too sticky and then we approach
the queen from the abdomen side.
So we wait until she turns a bit and then we
approach, get our fingers right down to the comb
and then we can pick her up by very gently
squeezing the thorax.
Then we can just one hand that frame into
position there where it will be nice and safe
and we've got the queen in our hand.
Got a little honey on my fingers so I'll just
remove that,
and we've got her gently held between
our thumb and forefinger.
You then use a cage like this we just pop the
lid open
and there is a nice big space there to drop the queen into
and we just drop her in, she goes to the
bottom and we very quickly close that lid up before
she comes up and could be pinched by that cap.
If she happens to get in the way before you get the
lid shut, just put your thumb over and then
gradually work it down.
So that queen is nice and safe in that cage now.
What we do then is just lean her on the top of
the frames and carry on with our
hive manipulations.
If we were going to requeen this colony
we would just pinch the queen and not
bother caging her at all, but I wanted to demonstrate
that caging process in this instance.
So now we'll close the hive back up,
we'll put the frame back where they came,
this one came out next.
You can see the brood is towards the front
of this frame, so we'll put that down
into place.
Time for a little bit of smoke
and move these frames over.
Once we get all the frames back into position,
we can then reintroduce the queen
if that's what our purpose is here.
So we would take the queen out,
by gently shaking her into our hand above
the hive,
we wouldn't do this on the ground because if she
fell out she would end up on the grass
and we'd have to pick her up there, so I've got her
in my hand
and then I will release the queen back onto the frame
and down she goes into the dark to be nice and safe.
So that is how we reintroduce a queen
once we have caged her.
So we always keep a cage like this right
on hand for when we're doing hive manipulations
in order to be able to keep her safe while we're
moving frames around.
So that is how to find a queen and about how
to cage the queen, how to release the queen
and it is a very useful skill to have
when we are making splits or requeening colonies.
Many different hive tasks require that we are able
to find queens, so there is just a few tips on how
to do that.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.