hello from Wallan Vicoria Australia

[gail54]

My name is Gail & I live about 50k North of the Melbourne CBD in Wallan, we have 10acres about 4k out of town. I run my own buiness from home making blades for turf machinery.
We went to an alternate farming expo were my husband (who works afternoon shift) decided it would be a good idea to have some bees, so ultimatly it was left to me to care for the bees, some thing I have never done before, and boy do I need help.lol

If any one on here is from wallan or surrounding area I am looking for a mentor, there is only so much you can learn from books & DVDs. I need to requeen my hive but after spending over an hour looking I could not find her. I have just recieved a new queen how log will she live in the cage? HELP!!! please

[AllenF]

You can split the hive up with an excluder to see which side has new eggs to narrow the side the queen is in down after a day or so of the split.   There are several beeks on here from down under.  Welcome to the forum.  

[Geoff]

  Welcome to the forum Gail. Hang around here and fire away your questions and you will get all the help you need. Only got one swarm capture this season so far but after about three cursory searches have not been able to spot the queen on two full size frames. However they are building up without any help from me. Good luck and enjoy your bees.

[Lone]

Welcome Gail,

We had 3 beekeepers unable to find one of my queens the other day, so we ended up making a split with some brood and the new queen, and what bees there were in the honey super.
But the next day there were 20 members from the club out home so we passed the frames around until someone spotted the queens.
The moral is, even the professional experienced ones are not good spotters!
Lone