[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. 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.
