When you're inspecting the hive and looking to find the queen, how long will you spend checking one frame?
That depends on how important it is I find the queen. I look carefully on both sides twice if I'm pretty intent on finding her. How long depends on how many bees are on it and how good you are at finding queens. If you're not that good I'd sit down and get comfortable.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenspotting.htm (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenspotting.htm)
But the real question is, why do you need to find the queen? You almost never do unless you're going to pull her out to replace her... you just need to find eggs and brood.
Currently, my main goal is never to find the queen. If my inpsection's goal is to verify a queen's existence, I look for eggs and that's enough for me.
But, I would simply like to get better at spotting her. Currently, I probably spend about 10 seconds on each side of the frame and move on. If I wanted to find her (let's say I wanted to mark her - something that I have never done and am a bit intimidated by at the moment), I was wondering how long folks would take scanning a frame if they did want to find her to mark her or pinch her (something I doubt that I would ever do, unless I caught a nasty swarm).
If most folks can find her in 10 seconds, I'll keep at it until I get better at it (the proverbial 'they' claim you do get better at it as time goes on - for me it is more of a random event - hey! there she is!)
I changed out a frame in my OH today. After closing it up I must have spent 10 min. or more looking on those 2 frames until I spoted her, just to verify that she was OK. If you don't need to see her she will be on the first frame you lift out, if you need to find her she will be in the bottom corner of the emptied out, hive body.
I have found her usually in the third or fourth frame in, just coinsedence? but thats usually were she is, either one side or the other.