Peek-a-bee

[BlueBee]

I had an odd swarm capture tonight.  I shook a swarm of bees down from a tree and into a bucket, and then dumped the bucket of bees into a hive per my usual process.  Of coarse you never know for sure if the queen is really in the bucket of bees you dump into the hive or not.  However when I see them madly fanning the entrance of the hive, I’m pretty confident I have a queen inside.

Such was the case tonight.  Lots of girls fanning.  I was feeling very confident the queen was inside.  Then all of a sudden I spot the queen poke out the entrance to the hive and start walking around.  I was torn between elated to know I caught the queen and dreadful she might fly away in a nanosecond.  She walked around outside for about 10 seconds and then scampered back into the hive.  Oh, what a relief!

So I was feeling pretty good and picking up my swarm catching tools.  I happened to look back over at the hive again and the queen is outside the hive AGAIN!  Now I started to panic.  Where is that dang queen catcher when I need it.  I frantically stumbled around until I found it.  I nabbed the queen at the entrance and put her back in the hive (inside the queen catcher). 

How long do you think I should leave her in the catcher this time?  Normally I release any queens during the first night, but I don’t have any brood or stores in this hive at this time.  I decided to leave her caged over night and will try to find a frame of brood/stores to stick in tomorrow to help persuade the swarm to stay.  Any other tips to keep an antsy queen from flying out of the hive?

[Michael Bush]

Put an excluder on the bottom board (assuming a bottom entrance, the top if you have a top entrance) and make sure there is not top entrance (if there is a notch in the inner cover slide the outer cover back to block it).  The excluder will act as an "includer" but the queen can now lay (assuming she's not a virgin).  A frame of open brood is just as effective.

[BlueBee]

Thanks Michael, that sounds like some good advice.  I hived this swarm in a neighbor’s medium equipment but I didn’t have any easily accessible medium frames with brood nor a queen excluder to spare.  She decided to let the queen out of the queen catcher tonight so we’ll see what the bees do.  Go or stay.  I wasn’t around when she released the queen but she claimed the queen looked a lot smaller than she did yesterday.  I’m not sure how accurate that conclusion is, but an interesting observation none the less.