Finding the queen bee is a fundamental skill for managing a honey bee colony, as she is the sole reproductive female and the mother of the entire hive. Her presence ensures the colony’s continuity, health, and viability, making her location a frequent check during inspections. Locating her allows the beekeeper to confirm her health, assess her laying pattern, and ensure the hive is not preparing to swarm or become queenless. While locating her among thousands of worker bees can feel like searching for a tiny moving target, a systematic approach and knowledge of her unique traits simplify the task.
Physical Characteristics for Identification
The queen bee is distinctly different in appearance from the worker bees and drones. Her most noticeable feature is her elongated abdomen, which is significantly longer than her thorax and extends far past the tips of her wings, giving her a more streamlined appearance than other bees. A full-grown queen typically measures between 18 and 22 millimeters long, making her the largest bee in the hive.
Her thorax often appears smoother or more hairless than that of a worker bee, and her legs are usually longer and lighter in color. Unlike the worker bees, the queen lacks pollen baskets on her hind legs, as she does not forage. Drones are also larger than workers but have a blunt, rounded abdomen and disproportionately large eyes that often meet at the top of their head, distinguishing them from the queen’s pointed abdomen. If a beekeeper has marked her, she will also have a small, colored dot on her thorax.
Systematic Frame Searching Methods
The most effective way to find the queen is to search methodically during the warmest part of the day, when many forager bees are out of the hive. Begin the inspection with minimal use of smoke, as excessive smoke can cause the queen to run and hide on the bottom board. Queens are most likely to be found on the center frames of the brood nest, where the eggs and young larvae are located, as this is her primary area of work.
Start by removing the outer frames, which usually contain only honey or pollen, and set them aside in a separate container. This creates working space. When lifting a brood frame, check the adjacent frame first, as the queen may have moved to the neighboring frame when the first was disturbed. Hold the frame at an angle to the sun or light source, allowing the light to graze across the comb surface, which highlights her larger, reflective body. Scan each side of the frame in a systematic pattern, and try not to focus on individual workers, but rather on any bee that moves.
Tools and Aids for Enhanced Visibility
Beekeepers often use tools to make the queen easier to spot during inspections. Queen marking involves applying a small, quick-drying dot of paint to the top of her thorax. This marking often follows an international color code that indicates the year she was born. While queen excluders are primarily used to keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey supers, they can also be used as a search aid.
The queen excluder sieve method involves shaking all the bees from the frames through the excluder into an empty box, which temporarily traps the queen and any drones on top of the mesh. Good lighting is also a significant aid; searching on a bright, sunny day allows natural light to penetrate the cells. If natural light is insufficient, a headlamp or flashlight can be used to illuminate the deep cells to confirm the presence of eggs.
Confirming Queen Presence Without Sighting
It is not always necessary to physically locate the queen; diagnostic signs within the hive provide strong evidence. The most reliable indicator is the presence of fresh, vertically oriented eggs in the brood cells. Finding an egg proves the queen was active in that spot within the previous 72 hours.
A healthy colony will display a solid, consistent brood pattern, meaning there are few empty cells scattered among the developing brood. The presence of young larvae further confirms a healthy reproductive cycle. Conversely, a queenless hive often exhibits a “queenless roar,” a distinct humming sound, and the bees may be unusually nervous during inspection. If the queen’s status is in doubt, a beekeeper can insert a “test frame” of young brood from a different hive, and if the colony is queenless, they will start building emergency queen cells on it within a few days.