Looking for the Queen

The swarms in the starter hives were new. The bees were still small in numbers and the queen bee had not yet been identified. That was what happened next. Beekeeper Timothy Stevens took out every single one of the frames that hung inside the hive. He and Amanda studied the bees on them carefully till they recognized the queen. Which one of the thousands of bees was the queen? To me they all looked the same. ‘But the queen has a longer thorax,’ Timothy said. ‘That is how she distinguishes herself from the others.’