# Tips for finding the queen in a vacuum bucket or box



## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

I have a "swarm sieve" as we call them over here. It is basicly a box with a movable framed queen excluder. The swarm is put into the box, box closed and turned upside down and the queen excluder sinks through the swarm by it's own weight. Spacers are need, so no bees get crushed when it reaches the bottom. The excluder is mounted onto a broomstick, that guides the excluder and the handle sticks out of the box, so when turning the box back you can hold the excluder in place. Open up the box and the queen and drones walk on the excluder. 

It's been a long time I used it. Usually I lightly spray the swarm and dump it into a lid or floor. The queen usually bobs up to the surface of the swarm quickly and walks on the swarm. You drop the swarm to the ground, the queen will walk on it soon. You can see it happen in this video when I installed a shook swarm into an experimental hive type. The queen is marked and I point with my finger onto it. 






Drop the swarm to the floor and the queen comes up. That's my way to find a queen in a swarm. If I can't find her that way, I put an empty super above a queen excluder onto the hive I want to install the swarm into, shake that swarm into the box and let it sit for a while. Bees start walking down onto the combs and the queen is exposed soon.


----------



## Mr.Beeman (May 19, 2012)

QE over the brood chamber and add empty hive body as a funnel, then dump the bees in. The only time I caged a queen was while performing a cutout where I found 13 that were emerging as I was removing the hive. Almost ran out of queen cages!


----------



## txbeek (May 21, 2013)

Thanks for the replies. Ill try the box idea. 

I did cut out the middle of a 5gallon bucket lid with and cut a QE to fit over the hole. Tried it today and the bees just stayed at the "top" (which was the bucket bottom but became the top when I inverted the bucket) with the queen and refused to go down through the excluder into the hive. I even smoked them to try and force them to move down into the hive, but no luck. 

But I didn't try misting them with water. 

Did a cutout today of an exposed hive under the edge of a roof. Vacuumed lots of bees, then moved comb into the frames, always looking for the queen. Vacuumed more bees, and then started dumping bees and looking through the bucket. 2 hours later still no luck finding her. So I finally just dumped all the bees into the deep box, and then searched through it. The girls kept fanning indicating the queen is there, but I still never found her. Will try again tomorrow when it gets light.


----------



## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

Use a Robo Style/Bushkill vac and then the bees are right away in a box on combs and the queen can be searched for as normal. The box they are in can also easily have an excluder top and bottom.


----------

