Fred,
Until you're familiar with finding the queen and workings of a hive, remove
the queen excluder.   It's a dangerous device to mishandle.  You could end up
chasing your queen out of the hive or forcing her onto honeybound comb.

Want to know if your hive is queenless?  Look for 1-3day old eggs on WORKER
cells.  If you have some 'worker' eggs you're not queenless.
You should also find the queen within a frame or two of day old eggs provided
your movements in opening/investigating the hive are calm to the bees.

My suggestion is to buy and read (!) a good bee book such as Diane Summataro's

"The Beekeeper's Handbook".  Bee-L isn't always the best source for newbee
answers since you might not get an answer to beginner level 'emergency'
questions.  Most here are good natured enough to lend a helping hand to
newbees when they have the time.

Just as a side point - make certain your bees aren't keeping your queen honey
bound.  If the second medium in your brood area is full of honey, your queen
can't lay.  She likely won't split her brood nest and walk across solid frames

of honey either.  Your job is to give her enough drawn(!!) comb so she can
lay....followed by excluder (if you choose)  and honey supers.  Starting a new

hive, let her lay on 3-5 (or all10) drawn frames, then add 5 more, followed by

the second deep.  You help your bees by pushing frames of pollen and honey to
the side and giving your queen drawn frames to lay JUST to the outside of her
existing brood nest.

BTW - unless by specific purpose I don't use queen excluders on any of my
hives.  Properly managed in spring, queens are excluded from honey supers
naturally.  Queens stay on their brood comb so long as they have sufficient
drawn comb to lay.  I rarely, if ever, find queens & brood in the wrong
place.   Many commercial beekeepers use excluders for speed.  They can toss
honey supers off or requeen and save time by knowing within two deeps where
she is.

When you're certain where your queen is, use the excluder again.  Until then
t's not a necessary piece of equipment to beekeep. Your queen doesn't roam all
over the hive at all times of the year unless you're reckless and scare her
around the hive.  Not that she doesn't take a stroll, but 99 times out of 100
you'll find her tending her duties, laying on comb - provided you give her the
right amount of drawn comb to work with.

Matthew Westall
--
     //        Earthling Bees
 >8(())))-     "Take me to your feeder"
     \\        Castle Rock, CO,  USA

Fred Born wrote:

> I'm new at this with 2 hives.
> Couldn't find the queeen - haven't been able to find her since I got the
> The only thing I can think I might have done, maybe is put the excluder in
> the wrong place and queen got up.
> Now what do I do!!!!!!