Why is the queen hard to spot? She’s also larger than the workers, and more slender n shape than the drones.
Drones can’t sting, either. They have their “junk” where the stinger is on the girl bees.
When the queen is moving around in the hive, there are all sorts of female worker bees. She has a thorax that is longer than the rest of the workers, but it’s harder to see thatpn the dozens of the drones, which have a fatter, thicker thorax and just look different.