Hello All

Great emphasis is placed in my area on finding queens. In fact there are two
kinds of beekeepers, those who can find queens at the drop of a hat (or a
veil!), and those who like myself have a major problem in finding her.

I am now of the opinion that I will never be in the league of the expert
queen finders, and I must use different procedures to attempt to achieve the
same end. With my track record, I cannot live with procedures which depend
on finding the queen. I have trawled through as much documentation as I can,
to find stratagems to carry out beekeeping without ever seeing a queen, and
I show below how I am using some of these approaches. I would be most
grateful for comments and improvements, as I have only recently started
using them.

I use what may be termed a 'Queen Isolator'. It consists of a Brood Chamber
to which a queen excluder in pristine condition is nailed on the underside.
The queen excluder must be in tip top condition since I am totally depending
on it to exclude the queen. A cloth is placed to the top of the 'Queen
Isolator' to protect the brood from chilling.

1. IMHO I never need to see the queen among thousands of bees. During normal
manipulations I need to see evidence of her existence in the form of eggs or
larvae. (And if I cannot see eggs, I come back in four days and I should see
larvae).

2. I must however be certain of where the queen is NOT. during swarm
control, creating nucs, and requeening a hive. To generate a 'box' of bees
and brood without the queen, I remove one by one from the hive, the frames
in which I am interested, and gently brush off ALL of the bees back into the
hive. I do not shake, especially if the frame contains a queen cell in which
I am interested. I then place the frames as they are cleared of bees, into
the 'Queen Isolator' and cover them with the cloth. Having processed all of
the frames in which I am interested, I place the 'Queen Isolator' on a
strong hive. Bees, without the queen, will move up through the queen
excluder to cover the frames. It normally takes about a half an hour
(depending on temperature), to get a good covering of bees on the frames.
Other hives can then be examined while the 'Queen Isolator' is being loaded
with bees, and any frames from other hives in which I am interested eg those
with queen cells, can be added to the 'Queen Isolator' as required, where
for example I am building mating nucs. I have used the above procedure
during this season, and it seems to work. The contents of the 'Queen
Isolator' can then be used to create an artificial swarm or a series of nucs
etc. because we know that it does not contain a queen.

3. Although I have not yet tried it, I am going to use this procedure to
eliminate the queen when a colony is to be requeened. (I have such a colony
coming up for this procedure shortly). I am going to use the procedure
outlined in 2 above until all but the queen and the drones have moved into
the 'Queen Isolator', and the queen, then in the hive box should be easily
identified among the drones. In fact can the old brood chamber be just
tossed out on to the grass some distance away, allowing the drones to fly
and the queen to be lost?. The 'Queen Isolator' now contains the bees and
brood from the entire hive, but without the queen. I do not know how long it
will take to isolate the queen and the drones in this case, but I am looking
forward to trying it.

4. A variation on 3 above appeared in the American Bee Journal which
effectively works in reverse. Under this system, the queen and drones end up
in the 'Queen Isolator'. This approach has the advantage that the process
can be speeded up by using smoke, since the bees are being driven down from
the 'Queen Isolator' into a spare brood chamber. I am going to try this also.

Using the above procedures IMHO, a beekeeper never has to be worried about
finding the queen. Just use the 'Queen Isolator' and any problem involving
the queen can be solved.

One thing that does strike me is, that the system depends on the assumption
that a queen can never pass through a queen excluder. I would imagine that
this proposition is not completely true, as queens with abnormally small
thoraxes must sometimes occur. This means that the system is not 100%
dependable but I would guess that it will succeed far more times than it
will fail.

Comments, criticisms and additional information received as always with
gratitude.

Sincerely

Tom Barrett
49 South Park, Foxrock
Dublin 18
Ireland
Tel + 353 1 289 5269
Fax + 353 1 289 9940