The Lazarus queen

[keith pierce]

. When I was lifting crown board a week ago, to see how they were doing, I noticed some of they were a bit on the small size in population. Two of them were transferred into national poly nucs straight away, the other was a commercial and I did not get a chance to transfer them till yesterday. When I opened the hive it was too late, as they had all died out. As I was going through the frames I noticed the queen. I picked her up and thought I noticed a bit of movement. I put her on the front dash of the van in the sunshine and closed up the doors for a bit of heat. Twenty minutes later she was walking across the front dash of the van. Alas, I had nowhere to put her so her resurrection was short lived.

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[Jon]

I have noticed exactly the same thing. The queen is almost always the last bee left alive and you can revive her with a bit of heat.
I have saved queens like this by putting the queen in an apidea with a cupful of young bees but it is too early to be messing about taking bees out of other colonies at the moment.

[The Drone Ranger]

When queen marking I have had a queen appear to die
She was playing possum though and legged it down in the hive as soon as she got the chance
Spiders do it as well
The one I spiked through the thorax with the crown of thorns stayed dead unfortunately
I am now using the queen catcher and plunger style marker as recommended by Jon
That lets you get a nice neat mark

In the start of the year I picked up a couple of bees off the landing boards intending to get them under the microscope
They looked dead as a doornail but in the warmth of the kitchen the got up and started flying around and yes I did take them back home to the hive :)

[Jon]

You can clip them as well using the plunger cage. Seems a shame not to! :p
Just need to tease out an itsy bitzy bit of wing tip and clip of about 3mm.

[The Drone Ranger]

Vicious swine Lol!!