How big is a queen bee usually?

Question

I have a bee hive in my siding of my house in the back and we're trying to kill the queen bee. What are the sizes and distinct markings of a queen bee?

Answer 1

look for a lot of bees hudled because the queen could be under them and I think the queen has a red marking in the back but not sure just get chemicals and put it all over the bee hive or smash it and get the water hoes.

Answer 2

The differences are not always that clear, and the chances of finding the queen are remote.  Plus if you do kill the queen the colony won't die or flee they will just feed royal jelly to other larva and hatch new queens who would fight for control over the hive.

Call animal control of a bee keeper to take care of the hive.  With the decline in bee population a bee keeper would be happy to find a new hive.

According to Wikipedia:  

"The queen bee's abdomen is noticeably longer than the worker honeybees surrounding her. Even so, in a hive of 60,000 to 80,000 honeybees, it is often difficult for beekeepers to find the queen with any speed; for this reason, many queens in non-feral colonies are marked with a light daub of paint on their thorax. The paint used does no harm to the queen and makes her much easier to find when necessary.

Although the color is sometimes randomly chosen, professional queen breeders use a system whereby the colour of a queen's dot indicates what year she hatched. This aids beekeepers who are deciding whether their queens are too old to maintain a strong hive and need to be replaced. Sometimes tiny convex disks marked with identification numbers are used when a beekeeper has many queens born in the same year."

The queen would tend to have the largest clump of bees around it, but that means they would also be more likely to defend her.

One of the texts in one of the reference articles said the author cut out a section of the comb in the middle of the hive and then watched it to see what would happen.  The bees would repair the comb and the queen would come to lay the eggs.  This was how he identified the queen.

I strongly recommend you call a bee keeper for removal with the risk of killer bees (bees who really hunt intruders) and a risk of being allergic to the bee sting (this allergy can stop a person's breathing in seconds).

Answer 3

The Queen will be 2 - 3 times larger than the other bees and seem rather fat.

Answer 4

Chances are most likely that what you have are really wasps, not honey bees.  Honey bees are normally gentle - unless you mess with the hive. (In the South and West, africanized honey bees can be very dangerous!). Honey bees can be identified by having hair on their bodies and being a golden brown or very dark brown color.  You will not see the queen outside the hive.  Wasps do not have hair. Yellow jacket wasps, often confused with honeybees, will hang around garbage, food, sodapop cans etc and pester you to no end if you are eating outside!  They often nest in porches, siding, and holes in the ground.

If you indeed have honey bees, you should not get rid of them without consulting with an exterminator first.  That is because if there is honey comb and honey in your walls, removing the bees will cause mold and pests (mice, maggots, moths, wasps, beetles etc) to get in the walls once the bees are gone.  You may end up with a huge bill to replace your wall and kill the pests and all the mold!

For this reason, many people leave the honey bees alone.

On the other hand, if you have wasps, you want to contact an exterminator because they can be very dangerous if the entire nest is not killed quickly.

If you are in the South or West your county extension office will be able to help you get rid of the wasps or bees.  If you are in a non-african hybrid bee area like the Midwest or North East, you should google for a local beekeeper who may want to "Vaccume" out the honey bees and try to save them in the spring.  They will use a special "bee vaccume" or set up a trap hive.  Again - be prepared to do a break out and clean up of the walls inside that area of your house.  Check with your insurance agency before doing anything.