>
> What is your preferred method for finding the Queen?
>

I was reading "Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding" by Laidlaw and Page the
other night and came upon a method that was presented there that I had
not heard of before.

I will paraphrase the method outlined by the book.  For difficult to
find queens, simply put a queen excluder and cluster box below the brood
chamber that you suspect she is in and then apply a liberal amount of
cool, dense smoke to the top of the combs.  If you wait a short while
and check the excluder, the queen should be caught trying to get into
the cluster box with the rest of the bees.  If you don't find her in the
first box, repeat with the other brood chambers.

I haven't actually tried this - but thought that it would work quite
well to find shy queens - especially in the fall when there are
typically lots of bored, ill-tempered bees in the hive.  It would also
seem to be faster than disassembling the entire hive in search of the
queen.

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