Difficult to diagnose. Early queen replacementqueen replacement:
removal of an old queen and installation of a new queen in a bee colony
, queen missing leg or with body damage.
A beekeeper may remove, injure or drop a queen on the ground (and she be lost to her colony) during hive manipulations. To replace a missing queen, bees use emergency queen rearing if the queen dies suddenly or is removed, or lost from her colony. This may occur naturally during swarming for example when a queen may leave but not be able to join her bivouacbivouac:
a temporary cluster of swarming honey bees intermediate between leaving home and finding a new nest cavity
and be lost, unable to return to her colony. Injury to a queen will often result in supersedure, provided the injury is not severe that she cannot move.
A queen may be marked with paint; paint on other than thoraxthorax:
the middle region of the adult bee body, which lies in between the head and the abdomen; consists of three segments: pro-, meso-, and meta-thorax; thorax attachments include three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings
may interfere with her pheromonepheromone:
a chemical substance released externally by an individual (from an exocrine gland) which stimulates a response in a second individual of the same species
distribution. Distal part of a wing may be cut as an alternative method of marking. Wing clipping does not appareently lead to queeen removal.
Queens may lack a retinue, due often to beekeeper opening and smokng of hive in inspection and injured queens too may lack a retinue. Queens not seen in an inspection may simply be avoiding light and failure to see a queen in an inspection is usually not due to an injury.
To avoid injury remove frames slowly and inspect frames over the open hive in case she falls from the comb. Handling queens (such as when marking them) might result in the queen fainting.
Dead queens may show up on ground outside colony entrances.
Queenless colony; injured queen
Beekeeping Insider https://beekeepinginsider.com/the-three-different-types-of-honey-bees-in-a-hive/
Facchini, Elena, et al.2021. Investigating genetic and phenotypic variability of Queen bees: Morphological and reproductive traits. Animals 113054 Https://doe.org/10.3390/ami11113054
Moore, Philip A., Michael E. Wright and John A. Skinner. 2015. Honey Bee Queens: Evaluating the most important colony member. eXtension Bee Health. https://bee-health.extension.org/honey-bee-queens-evaluating-the-most-important-colony-member/
https://bee-health.extension.org/queen-replacement-basic-bee-biology-for-beekeepers/