Slimmed Down Queen In Nuc

[Jen]

Remember last week, when I pulled a nuc from my hot hive, and I said that I thought the queen was slimmed down or maybe she was a just hatched queen.

Here are a couple pics, what do you think?

[Riverrat]

Looks like a normal nice looking queen in the photos I see

[Jen]

Hi Rrat, the queens I'm used to seeing from last summer where the ones I bought, Carni's, I could swear that their abdomens where so much larger... hmmm, 'maybe' those queens are larger queens genetically?

[pistolpete]

here is a "normal" queen of mine.  They vary quite a bit in colour, but not that much in size.
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[Perry]

I love it when the queen is so different coloured than her offspring, makes picking her out so much easier.

[Jen]

I've gotten keen in spotting her large thorax. The queen in this thread blends so well with with the carni bees that it is hard to spot her. I think I'm going to look into marking my queens, mainly because if your going thru a hive that is 5 deep, it takes a looong time to find her.

[pistolpete]

I think that you only need to find the queen once per year, that's about this time of year when you want to pull her for a Nuc and re-queen the hive.