Queen marking

When you see a queen bee, you can tell that she is quite different to a worker bee. She has a longer and less hairy body. She also moves in a different way, seeming to “run” across the frames in a different way to the workers.

But when you are faced with a frame covered in thousands of bees it is still very hard to spot the queen, especially if she is choosing to move fast. So beekeepers like to mark their queen with a blob of paint or a label on the back of her head. This speeds up hive inspections because the queen can be located and checked easily.

Our bees were marked by the breeder, but at my beekeeping class on a Monday night I recently had a go at marking a queen. We used a fantastic device called a one-handed queen catcher. (This is for beekeepers to catch a queen using only one hand (the other being used to hold the frame); it’s not for catching queens that only have one hand).

Here it is in action. You can see the queen on the outside of the catcher (on the blue bit at the bottom):

Here she has been scooped inside:

A flexible plastic screen is slid across the opening. This has gaps in that are wide enough for a worker to escape but too narrow for the queen to pass through. So any workers that are captured at the same time can be allows to leave:

Here she is, safe in the catcher.

Now the plunger at the bottom can be slid upwards to hold her firmly but very gently between the blue plastic strips and soft foam:

Some glue and then a numbered dot is applied and allowed to dry. Then she can be released to go back to her duties.