Most beekeeping books explain that swarm cells (queens being raised in preparation for half the bees and the old queen to swarm away) and supersedure cells (queens being raised to replace a failing queen) are easy to spot. Swarm cells...
Finding a queen is probably one of the most frustrating aspects of beekeeping! You are literally trying to spot one bee amongst tens of thousands of other bees, all while they run around on a frame. While there is no easy answer, I do have a handful of tricks I use after finding thousands of queens over the past decade.
Ah, the smoker. I love the sight of a lazy curl of smoke drifting out of a well-lit smoker. But if you’ve been keeping bees long, you’ve also experienced the utter frustration of a poorly lit, poorly working smoker going...
