Did you ever play Where’s Waldo? Since the time I was young, I loved picture hunts where you would search for hidden objects in a drawing. So, it makes sense that I love queen spotting and turned it into a “sport” while doing my hive inspections. The first time I opened up my new colony and looked at the frames, I thought I saw the queen and excitedly sent a message to the beekeeper I bought from. But only after a couple weeks in, did I realize I had NOT seen the queen, I had seen a drone.
How about you? Can you spot the queen in the above picture? If you are new to this “sport” here are some clues to help you:
Honey bees have three basic body shapes and sizes:
- the worker bees (the smallest in the colony)
- drones (large males)
- and the queen bee (the largest and longest of the bees in the hive)
Most honey bees are female worker bees. They hatch fully grown from their wax cell, often light colored, and covered in tiny hairs, and are the smallest of the bees in the colony (about 12-15 mm long, smaller than a dime for you coin users). Their life span is short, usually 4-6 weeks, and they have numerous jobs during that time. They have the common shape we may think of when contemplating bees. And within the hive, they are constant motion and humming.
The male bees are called drones. Their purpose is to go out and mate with other queens (not their own), and then they come hang out in the colony, enjoying the nectar and honey the worker girls have collected. Their bodies are a bit larger (15-17mm long, length of a dime) and bulkier. Their shape is that of a bullet or a capsule, so they are easier to distinguish from the worker girls. However, because of their larger size, I often thought I was seeing the queen until closer examination.
The queen bee is the largest (18-22mm long, approx a nickel according to measurements at US Mint.gov), and there is only one queen in the whole colony (and no king). She has a large black thorax (bump) on her back, she often has a distinct color (black, burnt orange, amber), her wings are small, and her abdomen is quite a bit longer than a typical worker bee. Her main job is laying eggs, so she has a whole team of attendants who clean and feed her. And that is one reason it can be so hard to find her – she is often under a pile of bees. But because her shape and color are so unique, once you learn what to look for, it can become a fun game trying to find the queen.
Why does one look for the queen? If a colony has a healthy and thriving queen, then it follows suit that the colony itself is most likely healthy. A colony with a queen is called queen-right. Often you know the queen is active by seeing the signs, such as eggs, and larvae in various stages (brood). At a certain point, the larvae get capped over with wax and become capped brood. The metamorphosis continues until a full-grown bee hatches. You can look at the capped brood pattern on a frame to judge the activity and health of a queen. So, it’s not actually necessary to find the queen.
But sometimes you want to make sure the queen stays in a certain part of the hive, so it’s important you spot her and take measures to keep her in that area. For example, some beekeepers don’t want any accidental eggs or larvae ending up in the honey, so they will use a queen excluder. This is a type of “grate” that is put under or over a box to keep the queen from moving between boxes.
I had read that queen excluders could be very helpful, so when I added a honey super, I also added a plastic queen excluder. The queen isn’t harmed, and she has the whole bottom box to run around in and lay her eggs. Meanwhile, the little worker bees can fit through the “grate” and take the nectar up into the honey chamber to be converted into honey. For my first year in beekeeping, this was very successful and my bees made loads of honey (for themselves and me).
Spotting the queen also comes in use when you want to split or divide your hives. For this you need two queens, or a queen and a queen cell (one queen for each hive). The queen is isolated and kept in one hive because you don’t want to accidently have 2 queens in one hive. They will fight to the death, with one or both queens dying.
As a new beekeeper continues studying, they will find many more reasons for queen-spotting.
So, how about my story? When did I finally see the queen, whom I named Trixy? It most definitely wasn’t on my first inspection in May. It actually happened on my fourth inspection of the original deep brood box, several months later. I had been busy with the second deep box and honey super the previous months, so this gave Trixy plenty of time to feel safe and just carry on doing her thing. But boy howdy, when I finally saw her, it took my breath away! She was beautiful! She was very active and paid me no attention. My hive journal has several exclamation marks and circles around the word QUEEN – as you can imagine.
Because the queen and colony were thriving, natural pests like small hive beetles (SHB) and wax moths were nonexistent or very low in number. I was learning so much about how these little creatures instinctively worked as a team to ward off threats and build honey stores. Now if only humans could get along so well…
