Color Marking of Queens

[Joseph Clemens]

Since I am raising queens year-'round, I have a batch of ten cells due to emerge (in their individual mating nucs) and another group growing in their cell builder, now. Just like last season, I plan to continue raising queens continuously, again.

Does anyone else raise queens through the Winter? If you do, how do you mark them?

[fish_stix]

If they're for your own use I would mark them with the new year color since they'll be fresh starting out the new year. If you mark them with "last years" color how would you differentiate between queens that are a year or more old and new fresh queens? We don't usually mark ours as we requeen at least once each year, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt!

[KQ6AR]

Hi Joseph
My drones are gone up here in the SF bay area.
I raised a couple in Oct. They mated, but I will have to wait to see how well they mated.

[scdw43]

I would use 1 Jan as the new year. We have 12 months on a color that is a long time in a bees life.

[Joseph Clemens]

Okay, I will keep using each years color, to mark queens produced in that year (1Jan until 31Dec). After all it will be the most accurate that way. No ambiguity.