In this instructional video, the presenter explains the essential skill of safely picking up queen bees, a task required for activities such as queen caging for varroa treatment, shipping queens, and swarm manipulations. The video outlines three primary handling methods: gently bracing the queen by the thorax, grasping both wings together, and transferring the queen to the legs for marking, while emphatically warning against lifting by the abdomen due to the risk of internal damage that can turn a queen into a drone-layer. The presenter stresses the importance of practicing on drones (and workers) first to develop a gentle touch and avoid stings, demonstrating each technique on drones before moving to a live queen in a mating nuc beside a Scalvini cage. The leg‑transfer method is highlighted as especially useful for marking queens, requiring at least two legs to be held to prevent the queen from moving or stinging. Throughout, the video underscores the need for speed and confidence when handling queens in high‑throughput settings such as commercial queen shipping, and encourages repeated practice to achieve quick, damage‑free handling.
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In this video, I'm going to show you how to pick up a queen safely. Picking up a queen is a skill that is required quite often in beekeeping. You might need to pick up a queen and put her in a cage, whether you're trapping her for varroa treatments or you're shipping the queen out. But also in some swarm manipulations, maybe you need the frame of brood for something and the queen's on it, so you have to pick her up and put her back into the hive. There's a number of ways of picking up queens. I think a lot of beginners are very, very scared of picking up queens because they don't want to damage the queen. And they're right to be scared. You can damage the queen quite easily. Now, I pick up queens all the time. Personally, I like to pick the queen up by gently bracing her on the thorax. I come in from the top, I pick her up from the thorax, and I hold her up. I'll show you how to do all of this in a minute. Another way of picking her up is coming from the top and picking her up by the wings. You connect both wings together, and that's a very, very safe way to pick the queen up. It's not so much that picking her up by the wings is easier, but you're less likely to do any damage by picking her up by the wings compared to picking her up by the thorax. You can also pick the queen up by the legs, but you have to be very gentle to ensure that you do not damage the legs. And also you need to ensure that you pick up at least 2 legs so the queen can't turn around and escape or sting you whilst you're handling her. Do not pick up your queen by the abdomen. The abdomen is the bit after the thorax, that big long bit that you sometimes see pulsating like that, the big orange bit of the bee, whereas the thorax is generally a much darker color. If you pick her up by the abdomen, even the slightest bit too much pressure, you'll start damaging the inside of the queen, and then she potentially could become a drone layer, even if you can't see any damage. So it's a really, really useful skill and something that I think all beekeepers should learn. Now, before you go jumping in and start picking up queens and damaging them, I would recommend practicing on a drone first. You can do everything with a drone. You can pick it up by the thorax, you can pick it up by the legs, you can pick it up by the wings. You can even practice marking the drones And it's like exactly the same as marking the queen. So before you damage your queens, practice, practice, practice on your drones. You should be able to pick them up, mark them, and release them with no damage whatsoever. And then you can progress on and start doing it to queens as well. It's a really useful skill. I'm gonna let Tommaso show you exactly how to do it 'cause he is the master. So coming over here to see Tommaso do it, he makes a really good point there. You can practice on the bees as well, and if you get it wrong, the bee will sting you. So you get some very good kind of either positive or negative feedback to show you whether you're doing it right. If you pick up a worker bee really nicely, she shouldn't sting you. If you pick her up a bit too aggressive, she's going to get really defensive and then you'll get a sting for your troubles. If you don't want to get stung though, practice on the drones. It's much easier. So first off, Tomás will show you picking it up by the wings there. That is a worker bee. And again, picking it up by the wings and you can see no damage to the bees at all. And he is also not taking any stings. Super, super easy. You can see the bees don't really like it, but as soon as they're back down, they just get on with their business. No damage whatsoever. Try one by the thorax. Oh, there we go, there we go. Picking it up by the thorax there. So a few practices with the drones there, and you can see they just get on with their business after that. Very, very easy. Very good. Right, let's find this queen and let's pick her up. So Tomaso was saying there, he's not got the mic on, uh, really important in the mating nucs to be able to identify where the queen is quickly, but then to be able to pick her up quickly. Much more flighty in a little mini mating nuc because She hasn't got as many bees to defend her, so she maybe feels under threat a little bit. And obviously, if you're shipping out thousands and tens of thousands of queens every year, you do develop a good technique and you're able to do it very, very quickly. It looks easy what Tommaso's doing there, but you do need to practice, practice on those drones and those worker bees. And there we go, there's the queen next to the Scalvini cage. So we're going to get right in there and Tommaso is going to show you how to pick that queen up now. So you come in from behind, and there we go, he's picking that queen up by her wings. So now he's going to show us how to do the thorax. So that is picking up by the thorax, and again, absolutely fine for the queen. And then I know you can't do the legs first, but you pick her up and then transfer to the legs, do you? Or how do you do it? Yes. So that there is the transfer from the wings over to the legs. That manipulation there from the wings to the legs, very, very useful for marking queens. You can go back to the wing, and really important, at least 2 legs at a time to ensure the health of that queen so she can't move, she can't sting, she can't damage herself. So there we go, super simple method to pick up queen bees, either by the wings, the thorax, or transferring it over to the legs for marking. Never pick her up by the abdomen. Practice on the drones first and you'll get really good at it very, very quickly.
