I got stung by a queen today!

[gilligan]

Is there some rare club that I now belong to?

I grabbed her was holding her in my hand to mark her and POP! she got me.

Was about like any other minor sting that you get the stinger out pretty quickly.

I was always under the impression that this pretty much NEVER happens.

[BeeMaster2]

I have always heard that it can happen but rarely does. I have never been stung be a queen. Did you possibly move too fast and scare her handle her a little too roughly?
Jim

[GSF]

Did you lose the queen after she stung you, as in her stinger ripped out of her body?

[BeeMaster2]

Queens do not have barbs on their stingers. This protects them from dying when they sting. They can sting over and over.
Jim

[gilligan]

Hard to describe in text.

I was going to mark her.  Picked her up in right hand by wings.  Then put her on my index finger (legs down) and used my middle and thumb to hold her sides, giving me perfect way to see her back to mark her.  This put her butt pointing at my palm.

She curled it up under her and popped me on the pad of my finger.

Luckily I've grown fairly accustomed to getting stung and didn't even flinch.  So I didn't drop her or squish her any harder.  Just adjusted my grip so she couldn't do that again. LOL

[bwallace23350]

How will the bees react if you  had killed her?

[BeeMaster2]

They would have made a new queen.
Bees do not react to queens being killed like you would expect.
Jim

[GSF]

Jim, I always heard that but wanted to hear a first hand experience.

bwallace, That a question with several right answers. For the most part if she released an alarm pheromone then they'd start stinging. (I don't even know if she has an alarm pheromone). Or not much of nothing except after a few hours they'd start another cell with a queen in it.

[BeeMaster2]

My first queen had defective wing virus. I actually dug a little hole and buried her thinking that if I just killed her that the bees would attack. They do not react to her being killed.
Jim

[Michael Bush]

I've had queens act like they were trying to sting me, but they never succeeded.  Jay Smith says he was only stung once by a queen and it was on a spot on his leg where he had been squishing queens, so he thought she thought he was a queen...  Andy Nachbaur says they will sting you if you put several in your mouth at one time... :)

[Acebird]

How many people do you know that say their dog doesn't bite even after they have bitten someone?  I had a wife that didn't bite and then we got divorced, boy did she bite.

[gilligan]

I've had queens act like they were trying to sting me, but they never succeeded.  Jay Smith says he was only stung once by a queen and it was on a spot on his leg where he had been squishing queens, so he thought she thought he was a queen...  Andy Nachbaur says they will sting you if you put several in your mouth at one time... :)

Well, now I feel accomplished. :)

Now you can say that you know a guy that got stung by one while handling ONLY one.

In fact there was no queen present in the next hive over that I went through (only two hives in the yard I was in).

[Wombat2]

I was taught to hold the queen by the legs - seems to cause less damage

[jayj200]

they do make sounds when cutting out queen cups.