Absconding Marked Queen!

[PA Pete]

Was sitting in front of the hives this afternoon watching the action at the entrance when all of a sudden I saw a large bee with a clear white mark come out the entrance, face outward, and fly away!

I almost had a heart attack!

My queen just absconded!

Then I thought carefully about what I'd just seen...

The queen had been a bit bulkier than when I'd last seen her. And her butt wasn't quite as pointed. And she was darker.

Wait a second! That was a drone!

I'd actually seen one of the drones I marked last week while practicing to mark my two new queens. Pretty neat to see him leave like that - nice to know my marking didn't hurt him, and it sure was great to realize it wasn't my queen!

[Michael Bush]

Always mark the drones with NEXT year's color. That way you can tell it's not a queen. A queen is likely to be this year's color or last year's color or even the year before that's color, but it's very unlikely to be next years color. smile.gif

[PA Pete]

Good idea MB smile.gif

I figured they wouldn't be around very long compared to the queen, so not a huge deal to mark em white smile.gif