Laurence Edwards shows what happens when worker bees ball a queen, surrounding her in a tight cluster that can overheat and kill her if left too long. He demonstrates how to locate and safely remove the queen from the ball, and explains why checking hives too early after introducing a new queen triggers the problem.
Very, very annoying when bees do this. They are balling their new queen. Means that there's likely a virgin knocking around in here, but at the bottom of this pile we will find probably not a dead but a bit of a suffering mated queen bee. See if we can find her. There she is. They're trying to get her again. And I've got her in my hand here now. Here we go, safely in the cage. Really annoying when they do that. It's just probably went in a little bit too early to check, but that is one queen bee. When you see them balling them like that, I don't think I've ever found a dead bee in the middle of the ball. They're always alive, they're always fine, but if you leave them any longer, they basically overheat in there. Managed to save the queen this time. Don't, don't go in there too quickly to check your queens. Can make them ball them like that.
