Three questions about the queen, on every visit

Finding the queen is satisfying and mostly unnecessary. On a strong colony in July it can cost twenty minutes and a great deal of disturbance, and at the end of it you know one thing you could have worked out from the frames. Three readings answer the questions that matter, and none of them needs her to be in view.

1. Is she laying? Look for eggs

Eggs mean she was laying within the last three days. That is tighter evidence than seeing her, because a queen can be present and not laying at all: a virgin, an old queen shutting down, or a queen the colony is in the middle of replacing. Open brood widens the window to about nine days, capped brood to three weeks.

Eggs are small and easy to miss. Hold the frame with the sun over your shoulder, tilt it so the light reaches the bottom of the cells, and look for a white thread standing on end. One egg per cell, centred, is a queen. Several eggs per cell, stuck to the walls, and drone brood scattered through worker comb is the signature of laying workers, which means the colony has been queenless long enough for some workers' ovaries to develop, and it is a harder colony to save.

2. Are there queen cells, and which kind?

Queen cells are the second reading, and they are ambiguous on their own. The same peanut-shaped cell means three different things, and what separates them is position, number and whether eggs are present.

• Swarm cells. Several, sometimes a dozen or more, hanging from the bottom bars and edges of the comb, in a strong colony that is running out of room. Eggs are still present because the old queen is still laying, for now. The colony intends to leave with her once the first cell is capped.
• Supersedure cells. One to three, built on the face of the comb, in a colony that has decided its queen is failing. Eggs are often still there. The bees will replace her quietly and the two queens may overlap for a while; the beekeeper's job is mostly to stay out of the way.
• Emergency cells. Worker cells hastily extended into queen cells on the comb face, often many, and no eggs anywhere. The queen is gone. The colony started these from larvae that were already a day or two old, which is why emergency queens are sometimes smaller and why some beekeepers prefer to give a frame of eggs and let them start again.

A charged cell, one with a larva swimming in royal jelly, is the one to record. An empty play cup, of which most colonies keep a few, is not. The app's phrase is queen cells, and it marks the hive as preparing to swarm or replace its queen so the next visit is scheduled sooner.

3. How old is she?

A queen's year is the one thing the frames cannot tell you, which is why it is recorded when she is introduced and carried forward from there. In BeehiveMind you say it once, queen twenty twenty-four, and every later inspection of that hive knows it.

It matters because a good share of the failures that catch people out are second- and third-year queens going over in the middle of a flow. A queen can live four or five years; her best laying is usually in her first two seasons. Whether you requeen on a fixed cycle or on performance, the decision is only routine if you know the number, and the international colour code (white, yellow, red, green, blue for years ending 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and again for 6 to 0) exists so you can read it off her back.

Reading the three together

Eggs, cells, age. Between them they answer what finding her would have answered, in a fraction of the time and with the hive open for a fraction as long. A few of the combinations you will meet:

• Eggs, no cells, young queen: everything is fine. Close up.
• Eggs, swarm cells, strong colony in spring: she is about to leave. Split, or make room, this week and not next.
• Eggs, one or two cells on the comb face, older queen: supersedure. Let them.
• No eggs, emergency cells: queenless but recovering on their own. Come back in three weeks and look for eggs from the new queen.
• No eggs, no cells, bees roaring and running on the comb: queenless and not recovering. Give a frame of eggs from another hive today.
• Capped brood only, no eggs, no cells: she stopped laying about ten days ago. Look again in a week; the brood timeline gives you two weeks of emerging bees to sort it out.

Every one of those is a different action, and every one comes from three readings that fit in one spoken sentence. That is the whole reason the app asks for them on every visit rather than asking whether you saw her.