How To Find The Queen Bee In A Hive

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In this article, we have a look at how to find the queen bee in a hive. To get this right you first need to be pretty sure you know what a queen bee looks like.

Our brains are optimized to see things that are different. So if you are looking for a specific apple in a heap of apples, you will struggle to find the one you are looking for. 

How The Human Brain Sees Masses Of Things

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What Does A Queen Bee Look Like?

The queen is like a bee on steroids – which is pretty much the truth.

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How To Find The Queen Bee

In a beehive, if you open the hive and move to the brood nest, this is where the queen should be.

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As AI technology advances, object recognition software and algorithms have matured to the point where you can actually use your cellphone to find the queen here. 

3.  A Sneaky New Method To Find The Queen

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How To Make It Easier To Find The Queen

We marked the queens with stick-on labels. 

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How To Find The Queen In A Difficult Hive

 I found that the easiest way to find her, in this case, is to attach a queen excluder to the base of a brood box. 

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In some cases, if the queen flies a bit further, the bees will eventually find her and you will see a cluster of bees develop around her on the ground, or bush, or back of your head, or wherever it was that she landed. Gently lift the ball of bees up and return it to the hive.

What Can Go Wrong

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1. Queen Flies Away

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Workers Ball The Queen

Sometimes touching the queen can trigger a response where the workers decide to kill her. 

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ADVICE

A beehive consists of anywhere from 2000 workers and a queen to anywhere above 50-60 000 worker bees in a large hive. Some hives have been recorded which have way more than 60 000 bees. Finding a queen in a big hive can be a bit daunting.

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