Tom,  I forgot to answer your first question.  How to find an elusive queen.
If you want to find her badly enough, that is for a particular purpose such as
replacing her rather than just to admire her, a method I have found successful
(with stroppy, suicidal, kamikazi bees) is to take the supers off and place
them just in front of the hive.  Pick up the brood box and carry it some yards
away.  Remove the queen excluder and any cover cloth to expose the bees to the
light.  Place a replacement brood box and floor on the old stand.  Have a few
frames of foundation handy if the comb is past its prime.  Take out a few
frames from the outside of the brood box which are mainly stores. Either shake
the bees back in the box or lean the frames with bees against the outside of
the box.  Using the space created arrange the remaining frames in the brood
box in pairs with gaps between them.
Go away and smoke a pipe of tobacco or make a pot of tea: take your time.
When you return spend some time watching the bees.  You will find one pair of
frames (or a frame leaning against the hive) with the bees behaving
differently to the rest.  They will have bees with their heads down, abdomens
up with the last segment turned down to expose the Nasenov gland (a white
transverse streak and the source of the "homing signal" pheromone).  By
fanning their wings they will be sending a scent signal to their sisters
"we're all right,we're with mummy".
Try that pair of frames first.  Gently take them from the box as a pair and
open them like a book.  The queen, having hidden from the light, will be
between them.   Using your third hand you can remove and cage or kill her.
What!  Are you one of those strange creatures with only two hands?  You'll
never make a beekeeper.
If you want to keep the queen or simply to give yourself thinking time put the
pair of frames with the queen into a nucleus box.  What you do then depends on
what your purpose was in looking for the queen in the first place.
Can you help me please?  I wanted to contact Michael Mac Giolla Coda about his
Galtee bees but his web site/ address is not functioning or, more likely my
amateurish attempts to reach it failed.  Do you have his address?
 
Chris Slade