Just make sure she is not trying to escape with her head sticking through one of the slots in the flexible strip whey you retract it for release. I had used it quite a few times before this happened to me; A very dark moment.Always wait until they are mated. If you accidentally get paint on the wings, they may not be able to fly and get mated. Once they ARE mated and have eggs in the hive, if you damage her you won't loose the hive. I was out catching and marking queens today. Got the queens in six overwintered nucs marked with a nice big green dot. The one-handed queen catcher I got from ML does a fantastic job. I am not able to grab the queen bare-handed, although I have no qualms about grabbing the worker bees. Perhaps it is a fear of clumsy fingers and a squished queen?
I had been forewarned of this problem and was paying attention. It would be very easy to do. If fact, one of the workers who decided to join the queen in the marking tube did get decapitated. Oops.Just make sure she is not trying to escape with her head sticking through one of the slots in the flexible strip whey you retract it for release. I had used it quite a few times before this happened to me; A very dark moment.
I use a marking cage, and I think I've probably marked 10 queens in my life/career thus far. It still terrifies me, even though I don't think I've ever damaged one.My heart would race when I first did it (for fear of damaging her) but it’s not a big deal any more.